Cop by Her Side (The Mysteries of Angel Butte) (20 page)

A guilty conscience gripped her as she walked back into the hospital a short time later, her feet knowing the way to ICU without conscious direction from her. Past the escalator. Long hall that widened in front of some windows looking out on a small courtyard. Double doors.

No, she told herself, relaxing, of course Clay wouldn’t mind. She thought he’d given her tacit permission to go ahead. He might have lost some trust in her today, but not all of it.

Drew stood when he saw her coming. Jane thought about hugging him, but something in his expression stopped her. She had never seen him so grim. So she only nodded, and they went in together.

“Oh,” one of the nurses said with a smile. “She’s been asking for you both.”

Jane forced a smile of sorts. Drew didn’t even manage that much.

Lissa was awake, plucking fretfully at her blanket. Her gaze flew to their faces, her eyes widening at whatever she saw there.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Both of you. Oh, God.” She sounded as if she was about to hyperventilate. “Not Bree.”

“Do you care?” Drew asked, his tone one of clinical interest. He advanced to his usual place at the side of the bed, but didn’t bend down to kiss her or even take her hand.

Jane stopped at the foot.

“How can you say that?” Lissa cried.

“At first,” Drew said, “we thought Bree must have stopped a car to ask for help. That she was unlucky enough to have fallen victim to a child molester. Every police department in central Oregon has been pursuing tips phoned in by the public. Do you know how many curly-haired girls Bree’s age there are?”

His wife stared at him as if she was mesmerized. Jane wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

“Do you know how I’ve felt, imagining my little girl in the hands of someone like that?”

Lissa said nothing.

He leaned toward her. “I was angry when Sergeant Renner began to speculate on other possibilities. Ones that meant you were involved in some wrongdoing. Not my wife, I insisted.” His voice became deadlier with every word. “But there was the fact you were so determined to go to Rite Aid by yourself. And the fact you never got there at all, although when you phoned me, you implied you’d been, but had just forgotten the athlete’s foot powder.”

Lissa opened her mouth, then closed it.

“There was the puzzle of why the accident happened where it did. What were you doing out there?”

Still, she only stared, but her expression was stricken.

“Then he got to asking about our finances. How were we paying the bills, with me having been laid off for so many months? Didn’t we have a heck of a steep mortgage? Car payments, too. My wife was handling all that, I said. But I’ve been asking, haven’t I, Lissa? And you’ve been blowing me off. I still didn’t have the guts to actually look, but Jane did. She pulled up our bank account. Saw what nice bonuses you’ve been getting lately.”

Lissa gaped at Jane. “How could you?” she whispered.

He flattened his hands on the mattress and bent forward, his lips drawn back from his teeth. “What did you do to earn that money, Lissa? You
will
tell me.”

“I...I... Nothing!” she almost screamed. “Not what you’re thinking!”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“I didn’t want us to lose the house!”

“But we were going to sell it anyway once I got a new job.” He straightened and his voice went flat. “Or did you have no intention of moving, no matter what I did?”

“No!” Lissa was gasping and crying now. “Drew, what is
wrong
with you? Why are you treating me this way?”

“Because one of us has to care about Bree,” he said with such contempt even Jane stared at him with astonishment, “and it’s obviously not going to be you.”

“How can you say that? I love her! I
can’t
tell you, or...or...” Her face contorted. “What if he kills her?” she wailed, before she flung herself onto her side, curling into a fetal position.

Jane had had broken ribs once. That was what this felt like, every breath agony.

“Who?” Drew asked hoarsely. “Who is ‘he’?”

Lissa was either crying too hard to answer, or was refusing to.

“James Stillwell,” Jane heard herself say. “That’s who wrote those checks to you.”

Her sister’s head bobbed. “He said...he said he wanted to help, with Drew out of work...” she mumbled.

“But he wasn’t being good-hearted, was he?” Jane said, her voice as cold and hard as Drew’s had been. “Were you doing something illegal for him?”

“Or were you his mistress?” Drew didn’t sound as if he minded either way. “You sure didn’t care whether I was in your bed or not.”

“No!” She unloosened the clench of her body enough to stare up at him in wild-eyed despair. “I wouldn’t do that. No!”

Drew looked down at his wife as if he hated her. “Does he have Bree, Lissa?”

“Yes!” she yelled, then sobbed. “Yes,” she said more quietly. “I think so. He must.”

“Why? Why did he take her?” Drew’s face worked, and he ran a hand over it. “Does he like little girls?”

“No! No. Nothing like that. It’s me. Oh, God. It’s me.” Lissa was winding down, the terrified understanding in every word making Jane’s skin prickle and burn as if she’d brushed against poison oak.

Lissa uncurled and leaned against the pillows. Now she was staring at some dreadful vision neither Drew nor Jane could see. She seemed unaware of the tears and snot streaking her cheeks and upper lip. “I think he was going to kill me,” she said dully. “He’d been giving me checks at work. Then he said he was afraid someone would notice. He claimed he and his wife were going to be at her sister’s house on Bear Creek and that I could come by Saturday. Only...only when I got to the address he gave me, I saw it was this rundown cabin that looked as if it was vacant. I’ve met his wife’s sister. This wasn’t anyplace she’d live.” She shuddered. “It’s so...deserted out there. There wasn’t any traffic at all, and there were a few driveways, but I couldn’t even really see the houses, and I got scared. So I kept going. I should have turned into the picnic area. At least there were people there. But I thought I could just keep going and make my way home. I was calling you—” her gaze flicked to Drew “—when this car came up really fast behind me. I can still see it in the rearview mirror. And...that’s the last thing I remember. Except Bree.” Her voice was so soft, both Drew and Jane leaned forward. “She was screaming. I can hear her.”

Her husband swore. His eyes had sunk so deep in his head, they were hardly visible behind the glint of his glasses. “Why was he paying you, Lissa? You have to tell us.”

She closed her eyes. “Glenn called in sick one day. I went in to look for something on his computer, and I saw he’d left his laptop, too. I was curious. I couldn’t understand why he worked on it sometimes in the office instead of his PC. Of course it was password protected, but I tried a bunch of things, and... Well, he’d used his daughter’s birthday.” She looked at Drew. “We’d talked about our kids’ birthdays. You know.”

Dread held Jane utterly still.

“He had QuickBooks on there, but I could see right away that nothing was the same as what I worked on. Truck routing is computerized, too, you know.” She waited, and Drew nodded. “That was on the laptop, too, only there were routes and dates I’d never seen before. I don’t know whether they’re just hiding some income, or whether they’re transporting something illegal, but I thought—”

“You’d blackmail them,” Drew said.

Finally she looked at him, her expression piteous. “Finding out, right when we needed extra money, it seemed like it was meant to be. Anyway, I’ve
earned
more than I was paid. Stillwell is a creep! He talks about how we’re all one big family, but really most of us are nothing to him. Nothing,” she spat. “Do you know how much Glenn makes? And we do practically the same thing! Well, if he can make that much, I thought I deserved it, too!”

Now Jane was the one to close her eyes. How had Lissa developed this sense of entitlement? She and Drew had had such a good life, and all the time she’d been seething because she was sure she deserved more.

“Did you really think he’d just pay you forever?” she asked with disbelief.

“He paid Glenn,” Lissa said sullenly.

“Who is a CPA. Who would earn way more than you no matter where he worked.” Then she shook her head. Why was she wasting time? “Who was in the car behind you, Lissa? Was it Stillwell?”

Now Lissa looked scared. “Who else could it have been?”

“If Stillwell Trucking is running drugs, he has some ugly people on his payroll. He could have sent anyone. Somehow, he doesn’t look like a guy who’d do his own dirty work.”

“I was supposed to come alone,” Lissa whispered. “I thought—I’d leave Bree in the car. Nobody would pay attention to a kid.”

“Whoever it was, he saw you go by. Maybe hesitate and look down the driveway, then decide you weren’t going to stop. So he came after you. You freaked and went sailing off the road. Maybe he was going to kill you, only those two hikers popped out and started running up the road to see if anyone was hurt. He might not have been able to get down to you, but Bree had scrambled out and he was able to grab her. He probably hoped you were dead, but decided he needed some insurance. With you in a coma, they couldn’t let her go.”

Lissa’s eyes welled with fresh tears. “Is she dead?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see how they can ever let her go. She’s old enough to be able to identify whoever it was who grabbed her.”

Drew turned his head to look at her. His expression was terrible. “Why hasn’t anybody found her body?”

Jane pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I have to call Clay.”

Lissa gasped. “Wait! You can’t tell him!”

Jane walked out.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

C
LAY
LISTENED
IN
silence to Jane’s terse recitation, hearing the deep distress she was trying to hide.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently. He had to step quickly aside when two deputies wrestled a struggling, handcuffed man past him in the corridor outside the detective unit.

If Jane heard the screamed obscenities, she didn’t remark on it. Instead, after a pool of silence, she said only, “Thank you.”

He shoved a hand through his hair. “You know I have to talk to her.”

“Be my guest.” There was a hint of her more familiar tartness, if flavored with something darker than usual.

“Are you still at the hospital?” he asked.

“In the parking lot.”

“Wait for me?”

“You want me there?”

“Yeah.” Of course he did. Hadn’t she noticed he always wanted her there?

“Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll see you in the waiting area.”

He hit the traffic lights right this time and made it back to the hospital in under ten minutes. Jane was standing looking out the window at the small courtyard surrounded by the hospital. When he walked up behind her, he could see through the glass and courtyard to the cafeteria on the other side.

“Hey,” he said, voice gravelly, and she turned and went into his arms as if it was the most natural place in the world for her.

She let him hold her for only a minute, but he felt better for it and hoped she did, too. Looking down at her, though, he saw that all the distress he’d heard was in her eyes. Damn, she’d lost weight this past week. Beneath her eyes were purplish bruises. But her head was high, her shoulders squared. This was Jane. Of course she was keeping herself together.

“Drew still in there?” he asked.

Jane shook her head. “He walked out without even seeing me. He’s...taking this hard.”

Clay could understand. He wondered whether Jane’s brother-in-law would stand by his wife. Or was he so terrified for his daughter, he wasn’t thinking yet beyond that?

Once they stood at Melissa Wilson’s bedside, Clay couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or not. He felt no compunction at waking her.

“Mrs. Wilson.”

Her lashes fluttered then lifted. Oh, yeah—she was deeply afraid, although he had no idea whether it was for herself or for her child.

In case she didn’t hold up for long, he asked first about last Saturday.

She wasn’t sure of the make of the car that had pursued her, only that it was a sedan, and silver. To her credit, she seemed to be struggling for any detail. “Something nice” was what she came up with.

“Picture the driver. I know you didn’t get a good look, but you might have seen more than you know. Think about hair color.”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t know...” The uncertainty in her voice gave him a clue that she was taken aback by what she did remember. “I think,” she said very slowly, “it might have been dark.”

Which meant it likely hadn’t been the president and owner of Stillwell Trucking behind her. Clay would have been surprised if it was. Guys like Stillwell didn’t get their hands bloody.

He asked her more questions. What about height, for example. Her brow crinkled. Tall, she thought, and he could see her increasing shock. James Stillwell wasn’t even average height.

Finally, he backed her up to the day she’d prowled through the information on Arnett’s laptop. She gave him more details than Jane had.

“Mrs. Wilson,” he said at last, “you cannot tell anyone you’ve revealed anything at all to us. If Brianna is still being held to ensure your silence, the slightest suspicion that you’ve talked could be a death sentence for her. Do you understand?”

She was shaking. Her teeth chattered, but she nodded. “Yes, I...I do. I understand.”

Very conscious of Jane standing quietly beside him, but not allowing himself to look at her, he asked, “Have you spoken to Mr. Stillwell since you regained consciousness?”

Lissa shook her head. “He keeps coming by, but the nurses let only family in.”

“All right. I’ll reinforce that restriction. Are they putting phone calls through?”

“Not yet. But...one of the nurses said they may move me to a regular hospital room later today or tomorrow.”

“I’m going to ask they hold off, or we’ll stop visitors and calls to you in the new room, too.”

“Oh, God.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “How will you find her?”

“I have some ideas,” he said, hoping he wasn’t lying, “but we can’t afford for her captors to panic.”

Jane stirred. “What if Mr. Stillwell
is
allowed to see Lissa the next time he comes? If she tells him she won’t say a word, might he let Bree go?”

With both women looking at him with such desperation, he didn’t want to say this, but knew he had to. “I doubt it. My guess is that, right now, Stillwell and Arnett are thinking about doing some housecleaning. I want to make sure they don’t have a chance to finish up.”

“Bree...” Lissa whispered.

He inclined his head to her, seeing that her suffering was genuine. “She’s my first priority. Count on it.”

With a hand on Jane’s back, Clay steered her out. He paused only to speak to the nurse, asking that the no-visitor rule be maintained and requesting to be informed before Melissa was moved, then kept Jane walking until they were in the parking lot by his Jeep, where he could be sure they wouldn’t be overheard.

“Can I trust her to keep her mouth shut?” he asked bluntly.

Jane blinked. “Yes.” Her voice firmed. “Yes, I’m sure you can.”

“All right. Stillwell Trucking is inside the Angel Butte city limits. I need to talk to your boss.”

“Colin?”

“Maybe Alec, too.” He nodded at his Jeep. “Come with me?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

When they walked into the city’s public safety building a few minutes later, heads turned. Clay realized it was Jane drawing the attention. Maybe because she was dressed so casually, in cropped chinos, sandals and a lime-green, cap-sleeve T-shirt with a Celtic design on the front. He’d noticed the shirt the minute she faced him back at the hospital, because it fit so snugly over her breasts, the swirled design unintentionally echoing the rich swell beneath. She might not wear a uniform to work, but he’d seen what she did wear, and it didn’t look anything like this.

But maybe it wasn’t the clothes at all. It might be the exhaustion and stress so clearly marked on her usually gentle, serene face.

They took the elevator and went to Chief Raynor’s office, where the P.A. looked surprised but ushered them in after only a few words said on the phone.

Raynor, a greyhound-lean, dark-haired man, rose from behind his desk and came around to shake hands and study Jane. “Lieutenant.” Lines of perturbation showed on his face. “You don’t look as if you’ve had good news.”

She gave a small, twisted smile. “I think I’ll let Sergeant Renner tell you about it.”

Raynor raised those dark brows at Clay, who said, “I was hoping we could speak to Captain McAllister and you together.”

Eyes of the darkest brown he’d ever seen assessed him before the chief nodded. “Sit,” he told them, nodding toward a conversation area at one side of his large office even as he reached for his phone.

Jane sank immediately onto one chair and stared at her hands. Staying on his feet, Clay studied a large oil or acrylic painting hanging on the wall, a disturbing damn thing that fragmented when he tried to see it as a whole, but suggested violence.

“He’s on his way,” Raynor said behind him. “Coffee?”

Clay turned. “I could use a cup. Thank you.”

Jane shook her head. He suspected she could use a boost of caffeine, too, but for all he knew, she’d been swilling the stuff nonstop this morning.

Colin McAllister and the coffee arrived simultaneously. Everyone settled in a semicircle around a low table.

Clay began to talk, bringing the two men up-to-date. “I don’t want to move on the trucking company until we find Brianna,” he said, “but I also don’t want them to have a chance to bury all evidence of wrongdoing.”

“If we raid the place, they’ll kill the girl,” Raynor said flatly.

Jane couldn’t prevent a small, anguished sound. All three men gave her quick, apologetic looks.

“They may still have hopes they can shut Mrs. Wilson up,” Clay said. “Her daughter is the lever as long as Mrs. Wilson is in the hospital and they can’t get to her.”

Nods all around. Jane stared at him.

“I think it’s safe to say she’ll have another accident once she’s released.”

More nods.

“I’m going to hunt for that little girl like I’ve never hunted for anyone in my life,” Clay said grimly. “Some possible locations may be within the city limits....”

Raynor shook his head. “You have my blessing. Just let us know what you need from us.”

“I’d like Lieutenant Vahalik to continue working with me.”

The police chief’s expression was kind when he turned his gaze to her. “Jane?”

“Yes. Of course,” she said tightly.

“I’m also hoping Angel Butte P.D. will be prepared to move on the company the second we locate Brianna Wilson,” Clay continued. “Don’t give the bastards time to feed a single piece of paper in a shredder. We need that laptop.”

He was gratified by the expressions he saw on both Raynor’s and McAllister’s faces.

“Colin will put together a team,” Raynor said. “We’ll be sure there are no leaks.” He hesitated. “Have you considered bringing Stillwell and the accountant in now? Leaning on them?”

“There have to be other people in the company active in their side business. I doubt either of them are guarding Brianna, for example. If we alarm them at all, we’ll be putting her at risk.”

McAllister, who had been listening attentively but not saying much, finally spoke up. “I agree.”

Raynor didn’t argue. He simply nodded. “You going for a tap on phones?”

“That’s at the top of my list. Mrs. Wilson’s statement should give us grounds. I’d like to get the phones at the trucking company as well as the two men’s personal phones.”

McAllister suggested a judge who tended to be liberal with this kind of warrant, and Clay nodded. He’d heard good things about the judge, a woman appointed to the bench not that long ago. “I appreciate your cooperation.” He swallowed the last of his coffee and stood. “I’ll stay in close touch.”

Everyone else rose, too. The police chief clapped him on the back. “You know I owe you one,” he said with a small nod.

“Your nephew doing okay?”

“Yeah.” Raynor actually smiled, if crookedly. “He had some nightmares, but nothing you wouldn’t expect. He’s thinking he might go into law enforcement.”

Clay couldn’t help a chuckle, despite his dark mood. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Not sure his mother is thrilled,” the chief said, sounding amused, “but she figures he’s got plenty of years to change his mind.”

The boy’s mother, Clay knew, was now Alec Raynor’s wife.

Colin walked Jane and Clay out, the three of them discussing the makeup of the team and how they’d proceed once they got the okay from Clay. Nobody said,
What if you don’t find Brianna?

Clay wasn’t ready to seriously consider the possibility she was dead. He hadn’t been kidding when he said finding the little girl was his first priority. He’d have given his all in any case—but this wasn’t any case. He was looking for Jane’s niece.

* * *

J
ANE
WAS
GRATEFUL
for the chance to
do
something, even if it was research on a computer.

While Clay put together what he needed for the warrant and then left for the courthouse to get a signature, she had started with all property owned by Stillwell Trucking, then by Stillwell himself. Jane dived into the task, lacking faith that men as smart as James Stillwell and Glenn Arnett would be stupid enough to chat on the phone about their hostage and where they had her stashed. If they were really involved deeply in transporting illegal drugs, they would be aware of the risk of wiretaps. Jane knew Clay had to try, but she had a bad feeling they wouldn’t find Bree that way.

Stillwell Trucking, she learned, leased some loading bays and storage berths in western Oregon and in other states, but nothing that sounded probable. The company’s headquarters in Angel Butte was huge, of course, but neither of them could imagine he would take the risk of stowing a little girl there.

James Stillwell and his wife owned a home in one of the wealthiest enclaves in the county, one with a spectacular view northwest toward The Sisters and Mount Bachelor. He also owned a condo at a resort on Century Drive close to the ski area at Mount Bachelor. Turned out the place was time-share, and the Stillwells’ condo was actually rented out to other people a good deal of the time. The rental agent told her eagerly that it happened to be available for the coming week, and Jane asked if she could see it.

She had to listen to a spiel about the extraordinary amenities the resort offered owners.

“Unlikely,” she told Clay upon his return, when he set down his phone from a call of his own, “but one of us had better check it out.”

She moved on to property in the wife’s name, then the son’s and daughter’s. The daughter’s and son-in-law’s names registered nowhere local. They lived in Minneapolis. The son, though, worked for his father’s company, supervising operations on the west side of the state. He owned a home in Portland and, interestingly enough, a cabin on Clear Lake not ten miles from Angel Butte.

She underscored the address twice with a heavy hand.

Clay was clearly frustrated. The Arnetts appeared not to own any resort or investment properties at all, only a home in the gracious Old Town of Angel Butte, but not one that was riverfront.

“They have a daughter at Pomona College in southern California,” he reported. “Looks like Daddy is forking out forty thousand dollars plus a year for her education, and he’s still got another kid to go.”

“Good reason to bend his morals a little,” Jane muttered.

Clay shook his head in disbelief. “That’s one hell of a lot of money for a college education.”