Broken Places (10 page)

Chapter Thirty-five

Was that Tom following her in a police car or another deputy he’d assigned to play guardian? On this dark road, Rachel couldn’t tell who was behind the wheel. As long as he didn’t try to stop her, she would ignore him and go about her business—which didn’t include going straight home.

She couldn’t let this night pass without talking to Ben. She was willing to allow him his secrets, but if he’d hidden something as scandalous as a relationship with an underage girl from her while she was going around defending him, he owed her an explanation and she was damned well going to get one.

The Sheriff’s Department cruiser stayed with her as she drove toward Ben’s property, then up his long driveway.

“Oh, great,” Rachel muttered when she pulled into the parking area in front of the house. Angie Hogencamp’s green VW beetle sat behind Ben’s Jaguar in the bright arc of the security lights. Rachel didn’t want anybody else around when she confronted Ben.

On second thought, maybe it wasn’t a bad idea for Angie to hear this. She had a right to know the truth about the man she worked for.

When Rachel stepped out of her vehicle, the air felt electric, making her skin tingle, and the swaying trees warned of a coming storm. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She slammed her door and waited to see who was driving the cruiser that pulled in behind her vehicle.

Brandon, not Tom. Okay, she could handle Brandon.

When he opened his door, Rachel said, “Why don’t you go on to my house and keep Holly company? I might be here a while.”

“The captain told me to stick with you all the way home. He’s really worried about those nut cases at the meeting. They might come after you.”

“Right,” Rachel said. “I guess it would make the Sheriff’s Department look bad if anything happened to me.”

“I don’t think that’s the only reason the captain’s worried,” Brandon said.

Brandon’s reproachful look gave her a twinge of guilt. Rachel sighed. It wasn’t fair to put poor Brandon on the spot by venting her frustration with his boss. Starting up the steps, she said, “I hope you don’t mind waiting.”

Ben opened the door just as she was about to press a thumb to the bell. “I saw you drive up,” he said. He frowned at Brandon. “Why do you have a cop with you?”

Rachel marched past him into the foyer and waited until he’d closed the door. She assumed Angie was within earshot, although she didn’t see her in the living room off to the right. “I got blindsided at that meeting tonight. Somebody stood up and said you left New York because you were sleeping with an underage girl and her father found out. Is it true?”

“Aw, shit,” Ben groaned. “Why did you go to that damned meeting?”

“Answer my question, please. Is it true? Is that what Cam Taylor was really trying to blackmail you with?”

“I’m sorry you got caught up in this. I should have told you, but I was ashamed of the whole business, and I wasn’t sure you’d understand—” He broke off and shook his head.

“You didn’t think I’d understand if you told me you were sleeping with a minor? Well, yeah, I guess you were right. I do have a little trouble understanding that.”

“Come on, Rachel, don’t you even want to hear my side of—”

“It’s not true!” Angie exclaimed, striding up the hall from the back of the house. “You’ll never make me believe something like that.” When she reached them, she turned a pleading look on Ben. “It isn’t true, is it? It’s just some wild story Cam Taylor made up?”

Both women waited for Ben’s answer. Hands on his hips, he stared at the floor.
Deny it, please deny it,
Rachel begged silently.
Convince me it’s not true.

Gesturing toward the living room, Ben said, “Let’s sit down and I’ll tell you both what really happened.”

***

Tom sped along the mountain roads, reminding himself every few minutes to slow down before he lost control and wrapped the cruiser around a tree. He heard the growl of thunder coming closer, and he looked up to see streaks of lightning against tumbled dark clouds. Since the night his parents, brother, and sister-in-law had died in a crash during a thunderstorm, Tom had tried to avoid being on the road when a storm broke, but unless he turned toward home right now, he was going to get caught this time.

He kept going. He had to inform Ben Hern that his mother’s car had turned up. So far the department had kept a lid on the news, but it would leak before long. Hern should hear it from Tom first.

After seeing Hern, he had to track down Lindsay and get it through that thick head of hers that he wasn’t going to put up with her scheming. What in god’s name did she think she was doing when she got that mob together and turned them on Rachel? And on him and the Sheriff’s Department into the bargain. Didn’t she see how explosive, how dangerous, a situation she had created with her meddling?

Tom had gone looking for Lindsay after Rachel left the school where the meeting was held, but he couldn’t find her in the dispersing crowd. She knew him well enough to get out of his way, and she’d probably taken off while he was dealing with that gang of punks. He’d catch up with her later. And after Rachel had a chance to calm down, he’d see her and try to apologize, for whatever good it would do. He had a sick knot in the pit of his stomach when he thought of losing her. Despite his doubts and all his unanswered questions, he knew he loved her, and he couldn’t stand by and watch her walk out of his life.

As he drove up Hern’s driveway, flashes of lightning illuminated the treetops. The storm would break any minute, and if he was lucky it would slacken off before he was on the road again. He expected to be here a while, dealing with an outburst of fury and recrimination from Hern.

What he didn’t expect was Rachel’s car, sitting outside Hern’s house. What the hell was she doing here? Had she come running right over here to give Hern a report about the meeting?

A department cruiser sat behind Rachel’s vehicle, and Brandon leaned against the cruiser’s fender. He spoke as soon as Tom got out. “You told me to stick with her all the way home. I couldn’t stop her from taking a detour.”

Tom slammed his car door. Angie Hogencamp’s VW beetle was here too. One more person to give Hern backup against Tom. “Wait for her. I don’t want her driving without protection.”

A gust of wind thrashed the trees, tearing loose a flurry of pine needles that swirled down around Tom and Brandon. Lightning threw a stark blaze across towering clouds, then the sky went black again. Tom’s skin suddenly felt damp, and the hairs on his arms stood up. “Come inside with me,” he told Brandon. “I don’t want you sitting out here with all this lightning around.”

Hern answered the door and groaned aloud when he saw Tom. “Have you come to arrest me, or just haul me in for more interrogation?”

“I need to talk to you,” Tom said.

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

“No.” Tom edged past him, brushing Hern’s shoulder, and Brandon followed. “This can’t wait. You need to hear it now.”

For a minute Hern stood gripping the door handle as if debating whether to shut the door and accept their presence or keep trying to get rid of them. A blast of wind found the opening and flung pine needles over the foyer’s parquet floor. Hern closed the door. “All right,” he said. “What’s so damned urgent?”

Without an invitation, Tom strode into the living room with Brandon behind him. Rachel sat on one end of the sofa, Angie on the other. Angie folded her arms and pinned hostile eyes on Tom. Rachel studied her fingernails.

“I hope you won’t mind if I don’t ask you to sit down and stay awhile,” Hern said.

“I won’t stay a second longer than I have to.” Tom sat in a chair opposite the sofa. Brandon remained standing near the door, with his hands clasped behind his back. Glancing around at the heavy draperies and upholstery, the furniture that looked like well-maintained antiques, Tom was surprised to find such a curiously old-fashioned room in the home of a young man.

His gaze settled on the big, longhaired cat that occupied the chair to his right. Tom recognized the animal as Hamilton, the cat in Hern’s comic strip. The cat stared back at him, unblinking.

Returning his attention to Hern, Tom said, “I came to tell you that your mother’s car was found this morning. At the bottom of a ravine about fifty miles from here.”

Tom watched the shock waves move over Hern’s face, bringing surprise, confusion, and finally a realization of what the news meant. “My mother—Did you—Was she—” He wobbled as if his legs were giving way.

Brandon sprang forward, but Rachel and Angie reached Hern first. One on each side, they guided him to the sofa. He collapsed onto it, his face slack with dread. “Tell me everything,” he said in a hoarse croak.

“We haven’t located your mother. There were no personal items in the car. But it is definitely her car.”

“Oh, god,” Hern moaned. He slumped forward, clutching his head in his hands. “I knew it. I knew something had happened to her.”

Angie leaned close to whisper. Rachel stroked Hern’s hair once, like a mother calming a child, then placed an arm around his shoulders. At the sight of these intimate, caring gestures, Tom’s gut twisted with jealousy.

Thunder rumbled overhead, and lightning flared in the windows like flashbulbs every few seconds.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Hern’s reaction looked sincere, Tom had to admit. That kind of raw emotion, the overwhelming sense of loss that felt like being flayed alive, was something Tom remembered all too well. He’d never met anyone who could fake it convincingly.

Hern’s head came up, his face animated by sudden hope. “You said it was at the bottom of a ravine? You mean it went off the road? She could have walked away—”

“The ravine isn’t next to the road. It can only be reached by a track through the woods. The car was driven in there and rolled over the edge into the ravine. Then somebody tried to hide it by dragging tree branches over it.” Tom paused. “Big, heavy branches dragged down from the woods. Unless she was a bodybuilder, I don’t think she could have done it alone. If she was injured, it would have been out of the question.”

No one spoke. When Tom thought Hern had absorbed the implications of the situation, he said, “I have to ask you what your mother’s blood type is.”

“Her blood—Oh, no.”

Rachel asked quietly, “You found blood in the car?”

“Not much, just a smear,” Tom answered without looking at her. To Hern, he said, “Do you know your mother’s blood type?”

“It’s A positive,” Hern said, his voice thick, his eyes swimming with unshed tears. “Is that what you found in the car?”

Tom pulled in a breath, let it out. “Yes, it is.”

Hern made a strangled sound in the back of his throat and buried his face in his hands.

“There’s enough for a DNA test if you’ll give us a sample for comparison,” Tom said. “You don’t have to give blood. Just go over to Dr. Gretchen Lauter’s office first thing in the morning and they’ll do a cheek swab.”

He expected Hern to object to this intrusion, but instead he dropped his hands and nodded.

“DNA will take a while,” Tom said. “A week, at least—”

Thunder cracked directly overhead, making Tom wince. Lightning lit the windows. The big cat shot off its chair and galloped out of the room. In the next instant rain poured from the sky like a river breaking through a dam. It beat against the window panes. The walls around Tom’s memories fell away, and he had a dizzying sensation of spinning, sliding out of control. He heard again the crunch and screech of metal as a massive tree flattened his parents’ van.

Trying to drag himself back to the present, he drew a deep breath to slow his racing heart and gripped the chair arms to keep the others from seeing his hands shake. But Rachel saw. When he met her eyes, she looked back with sympathetic understanding.

Ben Hern, oblivious to Tom’s struggle, seemed to be fighting to gain control of his own emotions but failing completely. Tears ran down his face. “She’s dead,” he choked out. “My mother’s dead.”

For a crazy moment Tom heard an echo of his own voice, when he woke up in the ER after the accident.
They’re dead? They’re all dead?

“Whoever killed the Taylors,” Hern said, “they killed her too.”

Concentrate.
Tom yanked his attention back to the distraught man sitting across from him. “Don’t jump to conclusions. We don’t know that anything has happened to your mother. Just let us do our jobs and we’ll get the answers you need.”

Hern swiped at his wet cheeks with the back of a hand. “If I’d never come here, she wouldn’t have either. She never would have seen the Taylors again, and she’d still be alive.”

“Was something going on between them that you haven’t told me about?” Tom asked. “Did she go to the Taylor house Friday morning? You need to be honest with me now.”

Hern shook his head. “None of that matters now. If she’s gone, nothing matters anymore.”

“Everything
matters
,”
 Tom said. “Look, if you want me to find out who did this, you’ll stop obstructing the investigation.”

“Leave him alone!” Angie cried. “Can’t you see you’re just making it worse?”

Out of patience, Tom turned on her. “I’ve got a few questions for you too. How is it you just happened to take a day off from work on the same day the Taylors’ neighbor was killed?”