Devil Smoke (21 page)

The wait began.

Tommy sat in silence with nothing to distract him. Memories of the last time he’d been in a room like this kept flooding over him, swamping him as the past filtered over the present for a few moments, coloring it gray. Different room, he thought, yet exactly the same, except for the graffiti scratched into the plaster walls. Same molded plastic chair that felt rickety and was too lightweight and flimsy to ever use as a weapon. Same steel table bolted to the floor with a bar across it to secure handcuffs to if necessary. Same fluorescent light with its interminable buzz that would drive any man to confess any sin if he were left confined with it for long enough.

Same silence. With nothing to fill the void except memories.

He’d lost count of how many times he’d been interviewed those first days, and then re-interviewed when the trail went cold, over and over and over again. Good cop, bad cop, kind cop who came to the house and sat at his very own kitchen table hoping for a confession, competent cop, foolish cop, polite cop, angry cop… he’d met them all, played all their cop games.

Last time he was here—maybe in this very same room—last time, he’d been so anxious to leave, had felt like a caged animal, filled with the need to be out there, searching, doing something, anything to find Charlotte.

This time, there was nothing more to be done. So he sat. And waited.

Finally, Burroughs returned, accompanied by a petite dark-skinned woman who, despite being dressed in civilian clothing like Burroughs, had a military-like bearing. “You remember Corporal Harding from the state police?”

Tommy nodded. A year ago, it had been “call me Liz” as Harding sipped Charlotte’s favorite tea at his kitchen table.

They both regarded him in silence for a moment—the way a surgeon studied a patient one last time before he plunged his scalpel into the patient’s flesh.

Harding broke first, stepping forward to toss a stack of photos onto the table, face down.

“Do you recognize anything from those photos, Dr. Worth?” She scraped the seat out across from him, pulled it around so they were sitting side by side instead of opposite each other, and sat down, leaning forward so close he could smell her shampoo. Nothing floral or exotic, just simple and clean.

He slid a finger toward the photos, itching to turn them over, yet dreading what they would reveal. They had to be from the mountain grave. He pulled back, crossing his arms over his chest and pushing away from the table. It was a childish impulse, this deep-seated fear that once he saw, he could never go back to the way things were before the photos, before this evidence of the truth invaded his world. But it was an impulse he could not conquer.

Harding reached forward, selected a photo—seemingly at random, but Tommy was certain it wasn’t—and turned it over.

He’d braced himself for a view of a decomposing corpse. But that’s not what she showed him. Instead, it was the tattered remains of a yellow baseball jersey. The Falcons, his old softball team from Three Rivers’ ER.

“Do you recognize this jersey, Doctor?” Unlike Burroughs, Harding always used Tommy’s title.

“Yes. That’s the softball team I played on—until last year when I left the hospital.”

She flipped another photo over. Once again Tommy clenched his muscles and relaxed again when he saw it was simply the back of the jersey, where his name and number were imprinted. “Is it your shirt?”

“Yes. I had several. Charlotte often wore them to my games. We had one that night, the day she… but you already know that.” He glanced to Burroughs for confirmation.

“That’s all right. Feel free to repeat anything you already told us.”
All the better to trip you up and hang you with
, Burroughs’ expression said.

“Last time you saw your wife, she wasn’t wearing this jersey?” Harding asked, catching Tommy off guard by flipping another photo over. Again, he tensed and relaxed when he saw it was simply a close-up of his name on the back of the jersey.

They were conditioning him, he knew. He had to guard against it, because those photos hid much, much worse than an old softball jersey.

“No,” he answered. “She was dressed for work. Blue slacks, ivory colored blouse. Like I’ve told you.”

“What time was your game that day?”

“Seven. I was working the eight to four shift, but it always runs late, so we’d planned to meet there, at Frick Park. Her folks had Nellie, so we were going to make a night of it, go out with the team after.” He hadn’t made it; a multicar pileup on 376 involving a school bus and twenty-two kids had kept him until almost eight.

“When did you realize Charlotte was leaving you?” Burroughs asked, his tone matter-of-fact when he had no facts.

Tommy twisted away from Harding to glare at the detective. “She wasn’t leaving. She wouldn’t. If she was wearing this jersey, doesn’t that prove it? She would never have worn it anywhere else, certainly not if she was trying to run away.”

Burroughs leaned against the wall, arms crossed, tossing away Tommy’s alternative theory with a flick of his eyes. “Unless she didn’t know you knew. Thought she still had a few days to finish preparing. Maybe you convinced her to leave the game, meet you somewhere else. Wait until you got there. And then…”

Then it hit Tommy. Eyes wide, he looked up, first at Harding, then at Burroughs. “Leave the game?” Based on the time Charlotte had been seen at the convenience store and the time it would have taken to drive to where her car was found, the working theory had been that she’d never come back into the city or made it to Frick Park. “Does this mean—she was there?”

Harding waited a long moment before answering. As if hoping Tommy would fill the silence with words of his own. “We’re not sure.”

“One of the private investigators we hired, they talked to everyone at the game,” Tommy said. “No one saw her.”

“We know. We spoke to them as well. In addition to shop owners in the area.” Regent Square was a haven for coffee shops, cafes, and eclectic art galleries.

“But, if she was there and her car ended up thirty miles away at the Youghiogheny, and…” His voice trailed off as he stared at the backs of the other photos.

“Now that we’ve tied Charlotte to the area around Fiddler’s Knob, we accessed the CCTV for anywhere near there. A Toyota Pathfinder with a partial plate matching her vehicle’s was headed south on Route 51 at two thirteen that morning.”

Seven hours after he was supposed to meet Charlotte at Frick Park. Tommy couldn’t make sense of it; he stared at them both bleary-eyed. “You think she was taken at the game? While waiting for me?”

If so, then it was all his fault. She’d been there, alone, without him to protect her. Because of some stupid softball game on a warm spring night with no reason to rush home. It was supposed to have been a romantic timeout from adult responsibilities; instead it had turned into a nightmare.

“The Pathfinder spotted by the traffic camera was driven by a man.” Burroughs nailed the coffin shut. “Unfortunately, it was too foggy to get a good look at him.”

“Where were you at that time, Dr. Worth?” Harding asked in a gentle tone.

“You know where I was. At home, waiting.” He’d called the police after he’d gone to Frick Park, the game almost over, and hadn’t found Charlotte or been able to reach her cell. “Exactly where the police told me to be. In case she called or came back.”

More silence as they waited. He filled in the blanks for them—even though he knew they already knew the answer. “And no, no one can prove it. I didn’t talk to anyone or see anyone.”

Not until the next morning when he’d driven over to the police station— to this very building—and insisted on them updating him with everything they’d found during that long, long night. But it had boiled down to nothing. They promised to keep looking, but reminded him repeatedly that Charlotte was a grown woman, free to come and go as she pleased, and that there was no evidence of foul play or any criminal activity. They’d told him that even if they found her, if she didn’t want him to know, she had a right to privacy and they wouldn’t be able to tell him anything.

He’d left feeling more alone than ever. Frustrated and frightened and with no idea what to do to find his wife.

Now, both detectives remained silent. Harding eased back in her chair as if in no rush—as if the truth was sitting right in front of her and all she had to do was listen.

Interrogation 101: give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves. He was so damn tired of their games, treating his life, Charlotte’s life, as if they were puzzles with pieces missing.

He wasn’t going to play anymore. If that was Charlotte up on that mountain, then everything changed. Right here, right now.

Tommy stretched out his hand and whipped one photo over, then another, flipping them onto the table so fast they became a whirl of dirt and bones and more clothing, a tire iron, close-ups of a wedding band and the claddagh ring, and finally, a skull and the full skeleton. Shot
in situ
, just the way it had been buried.

Face down. Arms and legs shoved together to take up less room. Like garbage tossed aside.

Then he turned over the last photo. The skull alone, a frontal view. Nothing of Charlotte’s face remained, the soft tissues long ago rotted away. A few wisps of hair clung to the skull, lackluster and robbed of their coppery shine. The bones were broken; even in this view he could see the gaping cleft of a wound to the right temporal region, along with a shattered zygomatic arch—cheekbone—and eye socket.

Someone had hit her. Over and over. Venting their rage.

His entire body trembled with fury. At the animal who’d done this. At the police with their callous mind games. At God, at Fate, at life itself.

How could this have happened? To Charlotte, beautiful, joyous Charlotte, who’d spent her life helping people?

He swept the photos off the table, banishing them to the floor, refusing to acknowledge the truth they held. Except one truth. The one he could no longer avoid.

“It’s her. It’s Charlotte.”

Burroughs ignored the photos to step forward and press his palms on the tabletop, leaning forward until he filled Tommy’s vision. “How do you know? How can you be so certain? DNA testing isn’t back.”

“I’m sure. It’s her.”

“Seems to me there’s only one person who could be that certain. The person who put her in that grave.”

“Are you saying I don’t know my own wife?”

The two men stared at each other. Harding didn’t interrupt—rather, Tommy felt her studying him. They all seemed to understand that whoever spoke first lost.

Tommy was finished playing their damn games and following their damn rules.

“I’d like to call my lawyer now.” It felt like an admission of guilt, but he was drowning here. The more he tried to explain, the worse things got.

“You mean the suit your in-laws paid for last time we had you here?” Burroughs said. “Good old Gloria and Peter going to keep footing the bill now that we have you dead to rights?”

Tommy ignored him, trying to remember the lawyer’s name. Seth something-first-name-son. Thompson? Williamson? No. Michaelson, that was it. But Burroughs was right. He couldn’t involve Gloria and Peter, get them caught in the middle. Not if Burroughs was serious about actually arresting him.

How had it come to this? He tried to think of any other lawyers he knew. Only one came to mind. All he had to do was swallow his pride and make the call. She would understand. Plus, she already knew everything about both Charlotte’s and Sarah’s cases.

Valencia Frazier.

DESPITE LUCY TELLING
her not to worry, TK still called the body repair shop to confirm that Sarah had arrived safely to pick up her car. And then she returned to Sarah’s apartment building to canvass her neighbors. She hated feeling as if she’d shirked her duty, letting Sarah leave, but Lucy was right: the woman wasn’t a prisoner.

Still… she’d been given a mission, to find the truth, to watch over Sarah. And she’d failed.

Now she paced behind Wash as he worked his magic with the computers.

“No matter how much she loves lichen and rocks, I can’t believe a woman can live with no people in her life,” she said as she paced. He rolled his chair into her path and she changed her route, circling the table instead. “All she wanted was the truth. How hard can that be?”

“Sure you didn’t miss any of the neighbors?” From his tone, he wasn’t asking for information but rather searching for an excuse for her to leave.

“Nope. Not a single one remembers her. A few thought I was crazy, said her apartment was empty. How can she have not touched anyone’s life?”

“Relax, TK. Now’s the time for the machine to come up with the answers.”

“She’s a person, Wash. I mean, even when I was living on the streets, people knew me, people looked out for me, would have noticed if I’d vanished. But with Sarah—nothing. No one.”

“You said yourself she might have worked hard to keep it that way.”

“Still.” A red icon flashing at the corner of the projection screen caught her eye. “Hey, one of your thingies. What’s that for?” She rushed back behind his workstation to watch over his shoulder.

“When we got no joy from the local database search I extended it to the mid-Atlantic states.”

“So what is it?”

He clicked a few keys, and the monitor filled with a birth certificate.

“I thought you already found Sarah’s birth certificate.”

“This isn’t hers. She had a baby. A son. Born in Washington, DC two years ago.”

TK reeled back. “A baby?” She shook her head. “Definitely not at the apartment. Not with her on the trail. Where is he? With the father? Grandparents?”

“The father’s name is listed as Walter Thomas Putnam. Says they’re married. Address in DC.” He kept typing. “No Walter Putnam at that address now though.”

“Sarah was married. She has a son.” The implications spun through TK’s mind. “And she has no idea—” Then another thought occurred to her. “Wait. What if this Walter Putnam is who she’s hiding from? We need to learn everything we can about him.”