Quinn (4 page)

“Oh, I knew you were there.” Every minute. Though he’d tried his best to block her out. Now he realized there would be no blocking her out, and they would just have to learn to deal with each other. But this bolder, blunter Eve Duncan was easier to accept than the woman who had touched him so deeply that he’d wanted to scoop her up and heal every wound. He could handle this woman, and it was better for him to keep this aspect of her in the forefront. “I was busy.” He added with deliberate rudeness, “I didn’t know I was supposed to be here to hold your hand.”

She instantly flared. “I never asked you to—I don’t want pity. I want help.”

“Then tell me how you want me to start. Isn’t that why I’m here?”

She nodded. “Yes.” She drew a deep breath, obviously struggling to control herself. She looked down at the box of papers and envelopes on the table. “I need you to look at these. I want every one of them to be investigated.”

“What are they?”

“Letters. I’ve received a lot of letters since Bonnie was taken.” She tapped one pile. “These are the ones that are from people who say they’ve seen her alive and well in different locations.” She tapped the next pile. “These are the sick ones. Some of them say I’m to blame and should go to hell for letting Bonnie be taken.” She moistened her lips. “Some of them are from people who say they took Bonnie and describe what they did to her before they killed her. There are only three of those. Two of them I got the first week, and I turned them over to the police. They checked them out and said that they were nutcases and actually had alibis for the day that Bonnie was kidnapped. The last one I received yesterday. I held it to give to you. I was careful about fingerprints.” She gestured to the box. “Take them all.”

“You said that you’d told the police about them? The ones where Bonnie had been sighted?”

“Of course, I did,” she said harshly. “They said that they’d checked those out, too. I don’t trust them. I want you to do it again.”

He carefully opened the last letter she had received yesterday and was scanning it. Incredibly ugly. Sickeningly explicit. It must have been pure torture for Eve to read it. “Didn’t Detective Slindak tell you to just give the unopened letters to him?”

“Yes. I couldn’t do it. They were addressed to me. She’s my daughter. I had to be part of what happened to her.”

“These aren’t part of what happened to her. These are just a bunch of hyenas crawling out of the woodwork and trying to tear you apart. I’ve seen it before in these cases.”

“Have you? Well, I haven’t. It’s all new to me. So I have to treat everything that comes my way as if it had never happened to anyone else before. Maybe you and the police are taking it too much for granted because you don’t have the same perspective as I do. Maybe you’re not careful enough.”

“I’m careful.” He carefully put the letter back in the box. “I’ll check these out again for you.”

“Particularly the ones where Bonnie was seen alive.”

“Particularly those,” he said gently.

“I want to go with you.”

“That’s not procedure.”

“To hell with procedure. You said we’d search for Bonnie together. Was that bullshit?”

“No, but I didn’t think you’d be this proactive.”

“I was supposed to sit here and wait for you all to do everything according to ‘procedure’?” Her eyes were glittering fiercely, her hands clenched. “I can’t do that. I’ve waited for her to come home. I’ve waited for you to tell me you’ve found her.” Her voice was uneven. “I’ve waited for you to tell me my baby is … dead. I can’t wait any longer. I have to find out for myself.” She took a step closer to him. “Can’t you see that? I won’t behave like some hysterical female. I won’t get in the way. But I have to help bring her home.”

She was tearing him apart. What she was asking was strictly against the rules and procedures. He’d be handed a reprimand and could even be taken off the case.

To hell with it. He couldn’t deny her the chance she wanted.

He turned away. “I’ll drop this last letter off at ATLPD for processing. Then I’ll come back and pick you up, and we’ll go interview those four people who say they’ve actually seen your Bonnie.”

“I could go with you now,” she said eagerly. “I’ll just get my—” She slowly nodded. “You don’t want to be seen with me while you’re investigating. You’ll get in trouble. I don’t want you to lose your job.”

“I won’t lose my job. I just want to avoid difficulties.” He smiled faintly. “But what would you do if you thought that I would?”

“You’ve got plenty of money. It wouldn’t hurt you like it would some people. Still, it wouldn’t be good.” She hesitated. “But it wouldn’t change what I had to do. I’d just call your boss and tell him that I’d go to the media and tell them how uncooperative the FBI was being with a bereaved mother. I don’t think they’d like that.”

He chuckled. “Lord, you’re tough.”

“I told you, I grew up in the projects. I had to fight every day of my life in one battle or another.” She turned away. “Go to the precinct and see if they can start the process of finding out anything from that poison-pen letter. I can wait.” She sat down at the table and opened one of the envelopes. “I’ve gone over these letters dozens of times to see if I could find anything in them that would offer me any hope or insight as to where Bonnie might be.” Her hands were shaking as she spread out the first letter. “It won’t hurt me to go over them again. Maybe I’ll notice something more this time. Then I’ll phone the people who wrote the letters and ask them for permission to come to see them.”

She was sitting very straight, her lips tight, and her gaze fixed on the letter. Her concentration reminded Joe of a painting he’d once seen of Anne Boleyn in a London museum, staring at the sword that was going to take her head. The same fascination, the same resolution, the same tortured bewilderment. It was incredibly painful for him to stand there and watch her. He wanted to reach out and touch her, ease that terrible tension.

She glanced up at him. “What are you waiting for? Go on. We need to get started checking these right away.”

And the chances that they’d come up with anything new were poor at best. The sad thing about that knowledge was that in her heart, Eve knew it as well. But he’d be damned if he’d voice it. He turned away. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll call you if I get delayed.”

CHAPTER

3

7:15
P M.
Stone Mountain, Georgia

“MRS. NEDRA TILDEN. IT’S THE
last name on your list,” Joe said quietly. “Are you sure you want to talk to her?”

“You mean because the other so-called witnesses were such disasters? I can see why the police didn’t want me involved,” Eve said. “Facing the mother of a victim must be difficult for anyone. Two of them were embarrassed about their mistake when I pinned them down to a description of her. The other man was belligerent and just wanted me to go away and leave him alone.” Eve was gazing at the cedar-shingled gray house at the end of the block. “At least you haven’t said I told you so.”

“I’ll never say that to you.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” She opened the passenger door. “Let’s go see, Mrs. Tilden.”

“Eve,” he said hesitantly. “According to the police report, she’s not quite rational.”

“You mean she’s nuts?” She shrugged. “That doesn’t mean that I should ignore the chance that she may have seen something. Maybe the police didn’t question her thoroughly because she seemed unbalanced.” She glanced at him before she stopped at the front door. “I’ll go in alone if you think you’re wasting your time.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I just don’t want you to be punished unnecessarily.” He punched the doorbell. “By all means let’s talk to the lady.”

It was opened immediately by a small, plump woman somewhere in her seventies or eighties whose eyes were bright as an inquisitive squirrel’s. “You’re Eve Duncan.” Her dark eyes were fixed eagerly on Eve’s face. “Come in. Come in. I’ve been waiting for you. It’s about time you came to see me. If I’d wanted the police to come knocking, I would have called them.” She glanced at Joe. “You police?”

“FBI.” He put his hand on Eve’s elbow. “Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Tilden. We’ll try not to take too much of your time.”

“I’m seeing her, not you.” She gazed back at Eve. “You’d think you didn’t want that little girl back. You should have come sooner.”

“I’m here now,” Eve said. “You said you saw my daughter the night after she was taken? Where?”

“Right in front of my house,” the woman said. “It was a full moon, and I saw her walking down the street beside a man. She was wearing that Bugs Bunny T-shirt that the newspapers said she was last seen in.”

“What did the man look like?” Joe asked.

“I couldn’t make him out. Sort of dark. Tall. The little girl was skipping to keep up with him. She looked like she was trying to tell him something.”

“She didn’t seem frightened?” Eve asked.

“No. She seemed kind of … worried. But not scared.” Nedra Tilden nodded. “Why should she?”

Eve gazed at her in disbelief. “She was kidnapped, Mrs. Tilden. Of course, she would be frightened. Perhaps it was another little girl you saw.”

Her lips tightened. “Don’t you tell me who I saw. It was that Bonnie Duncan. I may be getting a little up there in years, but that only makes me see things clearer. I’m closer to the other side.”

“Other side?” Eve repeated.

“Do you think your daughter is still alive?” She shook her head. “It was a spirit I saw. You might as well stop looking for her. It was her ghost that I saw running beside that man and trying to get his attention.”

Eve inhaled sharply as if the breath had been taken out of her. “A spirit?”

“I see them all the time. The first one was my first cousin, Edgar, about ten years ago. Then there was my neighbor, Josh Billiak, who was killed in an automobile accident in the next block. After that they just seemed to keep coming. It made me nervous at first, but then I got used to it.” She lifted her chin proudly. “I decided that I must be special or something. That’s why it didn’t surprise me to look out my window and see your Bonnie. No sirree, you’re not going to find her alive. She’s dead as a doornail.”

Joe wanted to strangle the woman. “Thanks for your time.” He nudged Eve toward the door. “We have to go now.”

“No thanks?” Nedra Tilden stepped forward and grabbed Eve’s arm, her dark eyes greedily searching Eve’s face. “You didn’t want to hear what I had to say, did you? But I did you a favor. You have to come to terms with the grim reaper.”

“You come to terms.” Joe opened the door. “We’ll wait until we have more evidence.”

“Wait.” Eve pulled away from him and looked at the woman. “You hurt me. Why did you want to hurt me?”

“I only did my duty,” Nedra Tilden said righteously. “You have all these cops and FBI people running around and spending taxpayers’ money. I barely manage to get by on Social Security, and they’re pouring out cash trying to find a lost kid. You should accept that your Bonnie has been butchered and let everybody go about their business.”

Eve turned pale. “But I can’t accept that.” She turned away and walked out of the house. “Any more than I can believe that if she was dead, she’d make an appearance to someone who is as vicious as you.”

Joe followed, but stopped to bite out to the woman who was starting to scurry after Eve out on the porch, “Say one more word and I’ll have you taken in for a psychiatric evaluation.” He slammed the door in her face and ran down the steps after Eve. “Vicious is right.” He opened the car door for her. “I told you she wasn’t stable.”

“That’s very close to saying I told you so, Joe,” she said dully.

“No, it isn’t. I’m just reminding you that you shouldn’t pay any attention to anything the bitch said.” He ran around and got in the driver’s seat. “None of that bullshit was in the police report. Evidently she was saving it for you.”

“How kind.” She was rigid, staring straight ahead. “I wanted to hit her.” Her hands were clenching on her lap. “No, I wanted to kill her. I’ve seen cruelty before, but not like that. I couldn’t understand why she’d do it. I’d never done anything to her, and yet she was drinking in my pain … she liked it.”

Joe nodded. “That’s why I wanted to get you out of there.”

“Thank you.” She looked back at the porch, and Joe could see her start to shake. She was sitting so straight, struggling desperately for control, but her body was betraying her. “I couldn’t understand…”

And Joe couldn’t take it any longer. He reached over and pulled her into his arms.

She stiffened. “No.”

“Shut up,” he said hoarsely. “You’re hurting, and I’m offering comfort. That’s all this is about.” It was a lie. But God, he hoped she believed him. He had to find some way to help her, or it would kill him.

She was still, frozen. Then she slowly, tentatively, relaxed against him. “She said ‘butchered.’” Her words were muffled against him. “She said my Bonnie was butchered.”

“Because she’s a crazy woman.” His hand was in her hair. He loved the feel of her, the textures of her. Ignore them, help her. “And you handled her; you told her the way it is. I was proud of you.”

“I couldn’t let her words hurt me, hurt my Bonnie.” She gave a long, shaky sigh. “I wouldn’t believe the police or you. I had to talk to them myself. And now look at me. I’m acting like a child.” She started to push him away.

Not yet. Another minute. Another hour.

Another lifetime.

His arms tightened, then he slowly released her. “You’re no child. You’re very brave. And I feel honored you let me be here to help you. That’s what friends are for.”

She met his gaze. “Are you my friend, Joe?”

“I think we’re on our way.” He pushed back a strand of red-brown hair that had fallen across her forehead. “Don’t you?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, then nodded. “I believe we may be. It feels very strange for me. I haven’t had time for friends. First, I was fighting my way out of the slums, then there was Bonnie.”

“I was fighting, too, but not in the same arena.” He started the car. “Come on, let’s find a restaurant and get some dinner. You haven’t eaten all day.”

“You don’t have to do this,” she said quickly. “I’ve taken enough of your day. You can take me home.”

“Yes, I could,” he said. “But I’m not. You’re going to eat and we’ll talk, and by the time you go home, you’ll have forgotten that bitch.” He grimaced. “Well, not forgotten, but you’ll have a different perspective on her. Now, where do you want to go to eat?”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll pick someplace close to your place so that you can dump me and walk home if I bore you.”

She smiled slightly. “That’s a good idea.”

One step at a time. Just don’t let her close herself away from you, he thought.

She was looking out the window. “What if that woman was right? Bonnie could be dead. We both know it, Joe.”

“Yes, but we knew it before we went to see that witch. It was no revelation.”

“She said Bonnie wasn’t frightened. That was a revelation. I pray every night that Bonnie will be safe and not frightened.”

“Eve, back away from what happened tonight. She’s crazy. And you’re crazy to let anything she said linger with you.”

“Am I?” She glanced back at his face. “Is it a sign of our budding friendship to call me insane?”

“Damned right. I’m being honest. You said that was important to you. It’s important to me, too. Only the best of friends have the guts to tell you the truth.”

“I can see that,” she said quietly. “But no pity, Joe.”

“I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you there will be moments that I won’t be able to help myself from pitying you. You can only feel what the situation dictates, and this situation pretty much sucks.” He smiled. “But I’m a callous bastard. I’ll have no trouble keeping it to a minimum.”

“Are you callous, Joe Quinn?” She tilted her head. “You don’t impress me as being … but we don’t know each other. All I know is that you’ve been kind to me.”

“Plus all the stuff you managed to squeeze out of the Quantico office,” he said. “I’ll let you judge for yourself after I tell you the story of my wicked life over dinner.”

She smiled. “That will be interesting. It will be good for both of us to think of something besides me and my problems. Are you promising to be honest about that wicked past, too, Joe?”

He nodded. “Every detail.”

Being honest about the past would be no problem.

It was the present that would have giant lapses of truth.

One step at a time. Protect her. Help her. Never let her see anything beyond what she wanted from him.

Damn, it was going to be hard.

*   *   *

“I LIKE THIS PLACE.”
Eve gazed out the window at the Chattahoochee River flowing lazily only yards from the restaurant. “It’s peaceful.”

“Slindak recommended it.” Joe handed the menus back to the white-jacketed waiter. “You’ve never been here before? He said it was popular, and you’re a native.”

“I’ve heard of it.” Her gaze shifted back to him. “But it’s not cheap, and I’m a single mom with a daughter to support. A night out for me is a visit to McDonald’s.”

“Then you should have ordered something besides salad and a sandwich. No wonder you’re thin.”

“I’m not hungry.” She looked out the window at the river again. “Atlanta has so many creeks and rivers. I worried about them after Bonnie was taken. I thought what if she wandered away and slipped off a bank and— But then I worried about everything. You never realize how many dangers there are in the world until you have a child.” She leaned back as the waiter came and set their salads in front of them. “Growing up, I was totally fearless about anything happening to me. I thought I was immortal—like all kids. Then I had Bonnie, and I found out a pinprick could cause tetanus, a tiny germ could give her pneumonia. So many things to fear…”

“Stop looking at your salad and eat it.” Joe picked up his own fork. “And I don’t believe you were the kind of mother to hover over her child. You probably made sure that she enjoyed life.”

She smiled and nodded. “That was easy. She loved every single minute of the day.” Her smile faded. “Past tense. I keep falling into that trap. I mustn’t do that.”

No, ease her away from it. “You were sixteen when you had her?”

“Yes.” She picked up her fork and began to eat. “You know all that from the reports. She’s illegitimate, but I made sure she didn’t miss having a father.”

“I’m sure you did. But you must have missed the emotional support yourself.”

“Why? I had Bonnie, I didn’t need anyone else.” She shrugged. “Stop thinking of me as some heartbroken victim. Sex was the only thing that bound me to Bonnie’s father. I made a mistake. Our time together happened like a lightning flash, then it was gone. But I had my daughter and that was all that mattered.” A luminous smile suddenly lit her face. “Anyone who has never had a child like Bonnie is the victim, not me.”

“I can see that.” He had been watching with fascination the play of expressions that flitted across her face. Every now and then he could capture the Eve she had been before she had been forced to face the horror that now dominated her life. “It just surprised me that it happened when you were so young.”

“It surprised me, too. I assure you I wasn’t prepared to be a mother. All I wanted to do was get out of the projects and build a decent life for myself.”