The Fourth Victim (28 page)

FBI Headquarters
Tuesday, December 7, 2010

I
felt like the Queen of Sheba and a poor imprisoned maid at the same time. I was rich beyond measure and poorer than dirt as I sat in the FBI holding room with Sam and talked about everything that had happened.

All those years Sam and I had danced around each other, friends without really admitting how deeply we actually cared about each other. To see us right then, you'd have thought we'd been bosom buddies our whole life.

For the first time I told Sam about my dad. She knew, anyway. I didn't have to say anything, but as we sat alone in that room, while Clay went to interrogate David Abrams and JoAnne alternated between checking on Maggie and handling details of the case from Clay's office, I was completely honest. With Sam. And with myself.

I got weepy again, but there it was. “My whole life I've tried so hard to be enough and I never felt like I was…”

“God, Kel, you're the most ‘enough' person I've ever known! I wish I could've told you that.”

“I guess I didn't give you—or anyone—a chance to do
that.” I'd changed more than I'd thought. And had no idea where I went from here.

“You've come clean now—and there's no going back.”

A shard of fear shot through me. And a new sense of knowing, too.

“I hope you remember that when I come knocking at your door.”

“I'm going to be watching you, Kelly. If you don't knock, I will.”

They'd both been through so much in the past year. A time of momentous change for both of them.

JoAnne poked her head into the office. “Clay just called. Abrams will neither confirm nor deny his involvement with drugs, with Maggie or with Kelly's abduction. You probably know he's lawyered up.”

And I stood. I couldn't let him walk again. Not when he'd already trampled all over me. And my loved ones.

“Clay needs to know what you want to do with him.” JoAnne was looking at Sam.

“Book him,” my friend said immediately. “The Fort County D.A. is going to press charges against him for rape and child endangerment, plus gross sexual exploitation of a minor. And that's just for starters.” I sat back down. I didn't have to do everything myself anymore.

That lesson would take a while to sink in.

 

Clay was in his office after leaving the jail where Abrams was being temporarily held, awaiting transport back to Fort County. It would be an interesting time for the lawyer, bunking in with some of the scum he'd sent down.

Might teach him a thing or two about humility. Compassion. Maybe even about sex abuse.

He could only hope.

What the man had done was heinous, and Clay wasn't going to lose any sleep for thinking so.

He might lose sleep over his next move, however. The fact that he knew it didn't stop him from making a couple of phone calls and putting his plan into action.

Maggie Winston was on the cusp. She loved Mac. She had to love him, considering that she'd given him her virginity. And her love, her trust, her loyalty. She'd given him absolutely everything pure and innocent that she had.

And she'd almost caught a glimpse of the man he really was. Clay had the chance to help her with that. To set her on the road to freedom. And then he'd bring her back to Kelly, ready for love and healing and all the tender compassion Kelly Chapman wanted to bestow upon her.

He waited the half hour before Abrams's wife and children arrived in his office. He didn't go to see Maggie. Or Kelly. He hadn't let Samantha Jones know he was in the building.

He sat at his desk and did paperwork. Started the report that would close this case.

And possibly lose him his job. Because he was telling the truth.

To himself. And about himself. About everything.

He'd learned by example.

From a woman he wasn't going to forget as long as he lived.

And when he got the call from security and then, a few minutes later, met the elevator bearing a very pregnant Susan Abrams and three of her children, the oldest beside her, the youngest on her hip and another little one holding her hand, he knew he wasn't ever going to forget the next few minutes, either.

He'd told Susan the truth. She already knew about her husband's arrest; she knew why she was there. Maggie was in a different waiting room. One with toys and a couple of
couches and a television set. She didn't know it yet, but he was going to be taking her to Kelly soon. As soon as he'd introduced her to some very important people.

“Maggie?”

She'd been looking out the window and turned when he called her name.

“There's someone here I want you to meet,” he said, hoping he wasn't going to hate himself for what he was about to do. Susan Abrams deserved to meet the girl so she could believe, accept and eventually move on.

And Maggie had to see the truth if she was ever going to be free to live and love.

“This is Susan Abrams,” Clay said, knowing full well the girl would make the connection. “And these are three of her four children.”

“Hi.” Susan, wearing a concerned look, still managed to smile. She glanced at Clay.

“Hi,” David Abrams's nine-year-old daughter said.

Maggie just stared, horror-struck. She didn't return the greetings. She just stared. Eyes wide, mouth open. And then she bent over and started to sob again, attended by the FBI staff psychologist.

Clay hoped to God he hadn't sold his soul for a conviction.

He hoped it again twenty minutes later as he ushered Susan Abrams out of his office and back to her kids, leaving them with Sandra in the waiting room closest to Clay's office.

The expression on Susan Abrams's face was similar to the one on Maggie's. Similar, but not quite. The woman was strong.

And while still in complete shock over the day's events, Susan was already beginning to accept what had happened. She wanted to help in any way she could. Her brother's
death the past summer, the rumors she'd heard—and the things that David had told her—had been bothering her.

She'd known something wasn't adding up.

And she'd just agreed to testify against the man who would soon be her ex-husband.

FBI Headquarters
Tuesday, December 7, 2010

I was sitting alone with Sam, still debriefing the first thirty-one years of our lives, interspersed with monologues about the past four days, when her cell phone rang.

“It's Clay,” she said, reading the screen.

I had no idea what was being said, but Sam wasn't happy. She did, however, agree to whatever Clay was asking of her.

My stomach knotted up all over again.

It had to be dark outside by now. Past the dinner hour. I had no sense of time. Or place, either, beyond this room that had become my new home. My new prison.

“Clay's bringing Maggie down.” Sam's expression didn't convey the gloriousness of the news.

“She doesn't know you're here,” Sam said.

“Then you need to go out there and wait for them. You need to prepare her, Sam.”

Sam shook her head. “Maggie's on the verge of turning on Abrams,” Sam said. “We have to do this, Kel. We have to get her away from that man. We have to bring her back to us.”

I was a new me. I had to trust someone besides myself. I had to accept help.

“This is what Clay wants?” I asked.

I didn't really understand Sam's odd expression, but I noticed it. “Yes,” she said with more curiosity than conviction.

“He thinks that if she suddenly sees you alive, Maggie's going to be putty in your hands. And if you talk to her now, she'll tell you everything. But only you. He wants me to leave.”

I nodded.

Finally, something I could do.

 

Maggie didn't want to go to another room. She just wanted to lie down and be left alone. But when Agent Thatcher showed up in the second room they'd taken her to, she went with him. At least it got her away from that psychologist woman who thought she knew everything about Maggie.

Who thought she understood.

She didn't know anything.

Besides, there were no words that could help Maggie. No magic that could save her now. She'd just ratted out her mom. She was no longer sure she trusted the man she loved. And Kelly was gone because of her. Probably dead because Maggie hadn't had the smarts to tell Samantha about Mom and her plan right away.

She wanted to die, too.

“Here we are,” Agent Thatcher said, not touching Maggie but staying beside her as they came to a door at the end of the hall.

“Why are we here?” Maggie asked, not that she really cared. “Is this where I get taken into foster care?”

It was better that way. Going home with Sam, being at the farm, would be too hard because she knew she'd have to leave.

But she still wished she could. For one more night.

“No,” Clay said. He looked like he was going to tell her something, but then he didn't.

He smiled, though. And Maggie figured he was really
a pretty nice guy. In spite of all the crap he'd done to her. At least he'd been nice about it.

It wasn't his fault she'd ruined her life.
She'd
screwed up. A lot.

“You don't like me, do you?” she asked when he just stood there looking at her. She didn't want to go in that room. Didn't want to be shipped off.

“I don't really know you,” the man said. “But from what I've seen so far, yes, I like you.”

Hmm. He didn't seem to be lying to her.

“I'm scared, Agent Thatcher,” she admitted. “Please tell me what they're going to do to me.”

She hated begging. But he was the only person she knew who might be able to help her.

“Don't be scared, Maggie.” His voice was soft. “Trust us, okay?”

Maggie had no idea what that meant. But she wanted to do what he asked. She really, really wanted to do what he asked.

Before she could say anything, he'd opened the door.

He was handing her over. Just like that. Maggie didn't blame him. She deserved whatever happened to her. Still…

She entered the room because he held the door for her, but she couldn't look at the person sitting at the table. Not even when that person stood. She couldn't face anyone else right now.

Everyone knew what she'd done.

She heard the door close behind her. And turned to see that Agent Thatcher had gone without saying another word. He'd just left her there.

“Maggie?”

It was a woman who sounded so much like Kelly that Maggie started to cry, even though it was embarrassing.

“Sweetie?”

She looked up then. And couldn't believe her eyes. Kelly was there. Standing in a shirt she'd never seen before and jeans that didn't fit. She looked different, but she looked the same. She had a bruise on her face, but her eyes were Kelly's. And her hair. She held out her arms and all Maggie could see were the scabs on the sides of her hands.

They'd hurt Kelly.

Her back against the wall, Maggie slid down to the floor, still sobbing.

FBI Headquarters
Tuesday, December 7, 2010

M
y baby was in trouble.

No, not my baby. Lori Winston's baby. Who was in my care.

The distinction didn't matter much. Or even register. All I knew was that Maggie needed me.

I was around the table and on the floor with her before I could figure out what was going on.

“Maggie? Sweetie?” I pulled the girl into my arms. I held her, half on my lap and half on the floor. I rocked her. I stroked her hair over and over. I could hardly believe I was with her again.

She cried. But she didn't grab hold of me. I held her.

“Maggie? It's okay, love, just get it out.”

The more I talked to her, the more I seemed to be upsetting her. And eventually, I understood.

“Maggie.” I sat her up against the wall. “Look at me.”

She didn't. She just hunched over and cried.

“Maggie,” I said more firmly, “I want you to look at me right now.”

Slowly she raised her head. And, more slowly, her eyes focused on mine.

“I'm here,” I said, holding her gaze with mine. “I'm alive. I'm okay. And I'm here. For you.”

I didn't mean to cry, but when I saw those sweet brown eyes well up with tears again, I started to cry, too. “It's not your fault, sweetie,” I told her. But even as I said the words I knew it was going to take a while before Maggie accepted them.

We had a rough road ahead of us, my new daughter and I. But I knew something else, too. I was enough for Maggie.

And she was enough for me.

 

Clay insisted on taking Maggie and Kelly home. He didn't like the fact that he had no confession out of Abrams and that Lori Winston wasn't talking. They knew Abrams was the mastermind responsible for Kelly's disappearance, just as they knew he'd stolen Maggie Winston's innocence. But he still hadn't figured out who Abrams had hired to kidnap Kelly.

She refused to listen.

“I can't take any more, Clay,” she said as she sat on the floor of the holding room, Maggie cuddled against her, sound asleep. “I need to be home, in my own bed.”

“Then I'm staying there,” he said. He wasn't budging on that one. “At least until tomorrow. After Abrams has been charged. And after I've had a chance to interview Lori Winston myself. I'll sleep in my car, but I'm not leaving you there unprotected.”

“You've been in my home, Clay. You know there's plenty of space,” she said. “You have something against my third bedroom?”

Nothing. Except that he didn't belong there—and had no business finding the prospect enticing.

“What? Your home's good enough for me, but mine's not good enough for you?”

What was it with this woman? “I don't want to be in your home as an FBI agent.” She tore honesty out of him. And he hated it.

Kelly's grin disarmed him completely. “Yeah, we've kind of become friends these past few days, haven't we?” she said, looking like the ultimate Madonna with the exhausted and traumatized girl asleep at her breast.

When he said nothing, because he had no idea how to respond to her, she said, “Face it, Clay, we've grown up together.”

Maybe. What he knew was that she was making him grow.

Chandler, Ohio
Tuesday, December 7, 2010

It felt so good to be home.

And it felt weird, too.

Maggie wasn't leaving my side. But she wasn't talking much, either.

Camy jumped from my lap to Maggie's as we sat on the couch in the living room. I'd offered to turn on the TV. No one was interested.

Clay had been on his phone in the kitchen for much of the hour we'd been home. We'd stopped by his place briefly on the way to Chandler. He'd run in for an overnight bag. I'd stayed in the car.

And looked the other way when he'd brought my skates out with him.

I had to have a session with them. I knew that. In another day or two.

We'd stopped by the Evans farm, too, to pick up Camy and Maggie's stuff. I'd cried again when Camy greeted me.

Guess all these years I hadn't been as independent as I'd thought.

“Did he hit you?” Maggie's voice was soft. I hated the look in her eyes. The fear and guilt…

“I don't know,” I told her honestly, but didn't add Clay's theory that I'd been kicked. “I slept most of the first day. Passed out, I think. I don't remember much.”

“Did he…hurt you?”

“I can't remember.”

“But…were your clothes on?”

And I understood. Maggie wanted to know if David Abrams had done to me what he'd done to her.

“Yes, they were,” I told her. “David didn't kidnap me, sweetie. He hired someone to do it. Just like he hired other people to run his drug ring.”

Maggie had told me everything she knew regarding the meth lab. It was strictly hearsay, but it was enough to finally be able to charge David Abrams with drug trafficking. And to get the warrants Sam needed to find out what else he might've been involved in. Sam had questioned all the other kids. She knew about the ones Maggie had mentioned.

She'd also admitted that her Mac and David Abrams were the same man. Meeting Susan Abrams had been the catalyst, nudging Maggie from fantasy to reality. She seemed to recognize that Susan and her children had been betrayed far more than she had.

I hoped to follow up with the family if they wanted me to. And with the family of the deceased bomb-squad officer.

My biggest job was going to be teaching Maggie about faith. And about a love that was healthy.

I had a feeling I was going to be learning right along with her.

“So you weren't raped?”

The girl was sitting upright on the couch. A foot away. I pulled her closer, until her head was resting on my shoulder. The rumble of Clay's voice in the other room completed the strange scene.

“No.”

“What happened to your hands?”

“They were tied behind my back. I rubbed the rope against the rocks to fray it. My hands got scraped in the process.” I wasn't going to lie to Maggie. She'd been lied to enough.

But I could give her the easy version. I had to. No matter what she thought, or what anyone else thought, I knew that Maggie Winston was still a child.

One who deserved protection.

The media had the full story now, minus Maggie's involvement with Abrams. It was inevitable once I came out of hiding. For Maggie's sake and my own, I was avoiding TV and every other form of news.

Clay peeked around the corner, his gaze taking in Maggie and me, and the room, too.

“He's nice,” Maggie whispered.

“Yeah.”

“You spent three whole days with him?”

“Yep.”

“He took care of you.”

“Yeah.” I had no idea where this was going, but I was going to answer all her questions.

As long as she had questions to ask.

“You like him,” she said.

“Of course I like him. As you said, he's nice.”

“But you
more
than like him.”

“Do I?”

Maggie sat up and her grin was worth any discomfort I was feeling at her chosen topic. “Yeah,” she said matter-of-factly. “It's obvious, Kelly. You're different when he's around.”

I didn't want to know what she meant. But if it made Maggie feel good to think I liked Clay, I was okay with that.

“It's just…I have something else I have to tell you.”

Clay came around the corner. “There's no beer in the fridge,” he said. He held up a bottle of Riesling. “I don't…”

“Like beer,” he finished. “I saw a market on the corner,” he said. “If it's okay with you, I'd like to pick up a six-pack.”

It was fine with me and I told him so. Clay had been looking like he needed a beer ever since we'd pulled into my drive.

We'd stopped for hamburgers on the way home from Dayton. Still, I wouldn't mind having a glass of wine later. After Maggie was in bed.

I wouldn't mind having it while he drank a beer.

I'd known him for just a few days, but they'd been an intense few days. And he'd been my only contact with the world.

I missed him as soon as he'd left.

“What else did you want to tell me?” I asked Maggie.

“It's just…I did something. I thought it was good, but now, with Clay, well, I think I screwed up again.”

We'd fix it. Whatever it was, we'd fix it. We were going forward from here. The bad stuff was over.

“What'd you do?” I asked, ready to take it on. To make it better.

“I wanted you to, you know, have a chance to be in love. I thought if you had someone, maybe you'd understand…”

Maggie broke off and I tried to read between the lines.

“It seems so stupid now. I mean, you knew all along. I was the one who didn't get it.”

I waited. The rest of the story would come.

“I just thought, if you were in love, you'd understand about Mac and me and not be so angry at me for…for loving him. For
thinking
I loved him,” she added in a low voice.

“I was never angry with you, Maggie. I was worried sick about you.”

She nodded. I could feel the movement against my shoulder. And I realized it would take time for Maggie to fully understand, to assimilate, what had happened.

But that was okay. We had all the time we needed.

Something rattled against the back of the house and Camy barked. A winter storm blowing in. A branch against the window.

“This guy wrote to you,” Maggie continued as soon as Camy settled back in my lap. “He was a relative of one of your clients.”

“What guy?” I didn't see any letter.

“Just this guy. He wrote to you. He said you interested him. That he admired the way people respond to you. That's what he said. I guess you helped one of his relatives in a court case. Anyway, he seemed to really like you so I wrote back to him.”

“You did.”

“Yeah, pretending I was you.”

“He wrote to me at home?”

A client's relative would have written to my office address. Wouldn't he? Particularly if it was an expert-witness case, which it would've been if court were involved. Maybe this guy got my home address from the internet.

“Yeah. But when I wrote back, I didn't just
think
I knew what you'd say,” Maggie said. “I asked how you felt about
stuff. Like when I asked what a girl should say to a guy if she liked him, but she wasn't sure if he liked her or not.”

I remembered the conversation. I'd been hoping Maggie had met a boy at school. A boy her own age, who might distract her from David Abrams.

“Well, I'd ask you questions and put your answers in the letters I wrote to him. I typed them on your computer and then I deleted them,” she said.

Boy. This was unexpected.

“How long have you been writing to him?”

“A few months.”

Okay. I had a male pen pal who thought I liked him.

Camy barked again. Standing, ears perked, she looked toward the kitchen. Clay was probably back.

“We're going to have to write to him, both of us together and tell him the truth.”

“I'll do it,” Maggie said. “I made the mess, I can clean it up.”

I thought I might let her. Because she needed to be able to control something in her life. “Okay, but I want to read the letter first,” I told her.

She nodded again. “He seems like a nice guy,” she said. “Or I wouldn't have written back to him. He's a college professor. I think he wrote to you from work 'cause he had a strange address.”

“Really. What does he teach?”

“English. He was really glad you helped Jane. But his last letter was kind of weird. He said Marla knew he was writing to you and that she was upset but he said not to worry about her. It sounded like you knew her so I played along. I think she's his sister or his mother. Anyway, he said he'd handle her.”

Alarm bells started to ring in my brain. Loudly.

Marla—Marla Todd. Jane Hamilton. English professor.
Strange address. Prison addresses
were
strange. “What was this man's name?” I asked, trying to stay calm.

“James.” Maggie's sweet voice sent a shudder through me.

Marla Todd had been obsessive about James Todd. Obsessed to the point of unhinged. And I hadn't been able to get through to her at all.

James Todd had been a family member of Jane Hamilton's, all right. He'd been her husband. He'd been Lee Anne Todd's husband, too.

Until he'd murdered her.

While he was married to Marla.

The man was a bigamist who'd also been an abusive husband.

But Marla hadn't seen that.

She'd thought he loved her. For herself, not her money.

She adored James so she believed he adored her.

She'd stood by him during the murder trial that I'd been called in on as an expert witness.

Against James.

I'd been hired to get the truth out of Marla.

I'd gotten it out of the first wife, Jane Hamilton, instead.

And James Todd had gone to jail.

But it wasn't James Todd I was worried about. It was Marla Anderson Todd. She'd been willing to do anything to keep James. She had money, power. She was a strong, athletic woman. And the story about my release was all over the news.

And if she thought, for one second, that James was going to throw her over, as he had his first two wives, if he was going to make a fool of her after she'd made such a public display of standing by him, and if he chose me, whom she despised…

“And you let James think I liked him?”

Marla was obsessed with him to the point of mental illness. She— Suddenly I remembered that sound, the one I'd heard on the bike path before everything went dark. It was someone calling me. Marla. She was the one. Not Abrams. Or Lori Winston. Or any of the others. It had been Marla. And now she knew I was free….