Vanished (27 page)

Unease filled Evelyn. Noreen’s statement should have been a sign that she was finally seeing Evelyn’s side, that she’d turn on her uncle. But she was leaning against the ladder, seeming completely unconcerned about being underground. In fact, she looked almost comfortable. And the hand pointing the gun at Evelyn was steady.

“My dad was an idiot, too,” Noreen said quietly, as if she was afraid someone would hear her say it. “He shouldn’t have done what he did. He shouldn’t have made them leave. If he’d given them more time...”

“What, Noreen?”

“If he’d given them more time, it would have worked.”

“What would have worked?”

Noreen’s gaze locked on hers, her eyes distant and unfocused. “They would have adjusted. They would have believed they were whoever he said they were—and he said they were Peggy. I told them. I told them it would be better for them to just say what he wanted.”

She frowned down at the ground. “They were older than me and I knew it.” With a sudden burst of anger, she swung the gun up and down wildly. “Why didn’t they just do what he wanted?”

Evelyn tried to harden herself against the pain.
Ah, Cassie. You resisted, didn’t you? Held on to your identity no matter what. And it got you killed.

The thought made tears sting her eyes, but gladness swelled in her heart. She was proud of the little girl she’d known so long ago.

“That’s called courage,” Evelyn said firmly, even though she knew she shouldn’t.

Noreen scowled at her. “If he’d been able to wait longer, they would’ve come around. They all would have eventually. He got rid of them because they weren’t Peggy. But if they’d
tried
to be Peggy, like he’d wanted, maybe he would’ve let them stay.” Her voice turned plaintive, wistful. “So he wouldn’t have to try again with someone else.”

“What about me?” Evelyn asked, because she suddenly had to know.

“Why did he want two?” Noreen shrugged. “Maybe to double his chances of finding a sister for me. He’d never tried to take two before.”

“No. Why didn’t your dad come back for me? What happened that night?” Was that when Frank had discovered the truth?

“He got sick.” Noreen’s gun hand lowered, her expression sad. “He had his first stroke that night. He recovered mostly from that one, but with the CADASIL, he knew he was on a downward slide. His doctor had told him years ago, with all his awful migraines. The doctor hadn’t expected him to function so well as long as he did.”

She sighed. “Then, suddenly, he couldn’t do it anymore. He needed help with even everyday things. And that night, he definitely couldn’t make it up that tree to get you. He barely made it back home with your friend.”

Shivers slid along Evelyn’s skin as she realized how much Earl Abbott had told his six-year-old daughter. So much that he’d actually told her he’d planned to scale the live oak tree right outside Evelyn’s room to abduct her.

What about Cassie? What happened to Cassie?
sat on Evelyn’s tongue, but she couldn’t seem to form the words. In her heart, she knew. But she was afraid to hear it confirmed.

Maybe that was when Frank had gotten involved. Evelyn knew he’d had to change his whole life to look after his brother, even moved in with them a few years later. But maybe that night, when Earl had barely managed to get Cassie to the house, maybe he’d called Frank.

And Frank, instead of calling the police, had taken her down to the cellar like his brother had asked.

Could it be? Then Frank had become occupied with running his and Earl’s business all by himself, caring for his brother, paying his bills.

Perhaps that day with Cassie had awakened something buried in him, the way she’d thought finding Charlotte Novak might have awakened something in Darnell if he wasn’t her actual killer. What if Frank had resisted for a while? Once free of his responsibilities to his brother, maybe he’d started feeling the lure, the desire, to take over where Earl had left off.

He’d moved out of his brother’s house six years earlier, but Earl had died only last year. That certainly could have been the trigger that set Frank off. Maybe that was when he’d started planning, studying what his brother had done and preparing to resume Earl’s activities.

The nerves on the back of Evelyn’s neck tingled, telling her she was on the right track.

“My dad would bring them to the house,” Noreen continued, seeming almost relieved to have someone to finally share it with. “He’d let me play with them. Each time, he’d tell me this one would be my big sister. He’d let me get to know them. They couldn’t stay at the house all the time, of course. Only when he was there. When he had to work, and at night, they had to go in the cellar.”

A light came into Noreen’s eyes, a flicker of happiness. “Sometimes, he’d let me go down there with them so they wouldn’t be lonely.”

A feeling of disgust overwhelmed Evelyn. Earl Abbott had abducted girls to make up for one daughter dying, then locked his remaining daughter down in the ground along with his victims?

No wonder Noreen was so damaged. It was astonishing that she’d managed to lead any kind of normal life, hold down a job at the police station.

She compartmentalized, Evelyn realized. It worked for many children who grew up with domestic abuse. Hell, Evelyn knew she did it herself. Why not Noreen, too? The people around her would see a socially awkward woman who didn’t allow anyone to get too close, and they’d see the hard worker. But they wouldn’t see beneath that...

They wouldn’t see that under the timid, awkward administrative assistant was someone who’d never fully grown up. Part of her was still a small child, still hoping for a sister.

That was why she was so determined to protect Frank.

It wasn’t really about love or loyalty, or even fear, as Evelyn had assumed. It was because this was what Noreen had always known with her father. But also because she still wanted what her father had promised her all those years ago—a replacement for the big sister she’d lost.

“Did you draw the picture we found in the cellar at the old Bullock property?” Evelyn asked.

Noreen grinned. “Yes! I did it for Peggy. So she’d like her room better. So she’d do what he asked and want to stay. It took me weeks to convince my dad to let me draw it for her. He didn’t like the cellar. For him, it was just...”

Noreen frowned, shaking her head as though she was having an internal fight about which reality to believe. “The cellar was just because of the police. And that’s where he took the girls later, when he decided he didn’t want them.”

Evelyn hesitated, trying to figure out the best direction to follow. Whichever victim Noreen had made the picture for originally, she was so invested in her fantasy she’d called the girl by her sister’s name, and called the cellar her bedroom.

Evelyn could try to force her to see reality, hoping she’d choose the path of law enforcement she’d grown up to embrace. Or she could let her continue with her fantasy, and try to make her understand that letting Frank escape would mean he was taking Peggy away from her, over and over.

It was clear that Frank had come to the same conclusion Evelyn had. That Noreen was still part child, still longing for a big sister. And he’d seen how he could use that longing. He could use Noreen, use her connections at the police station to get away with it, and to cover it up if anyone got too close.

But how did Evelyn get Noreen to break free now? Should she force her to break with the fantasy she’d lived most of her life? Or push her deeper into that fantasy?

Either approach was a risk. For now, Evelyn decided to put off the decision, see if she could get Noreen to relax her white-knuckled grip on the Glock another way.

“Why did he put the cellar on the police chief’s property?”

Noreen laughed, a high-pitched giggle that sounded like a child’s laughter. “Jack’s father built it! Isn’t that great? He was going to use it as a root cellar. My dad just found it. He knew the chief would never go back there after that house fell down. So it was perfect! What better place to hide them? No one would ever look on the chief’s property.”

She leaned toward Evelyn. Another chunk of wet dirt fell from the wall behind her as Noreen added in a stage whisper, “If he thought the police were getting too close, he was going to frame Chief Bullock.”

Evelyn tried to keep the skepticism off her face. Did Earl Abbott really think that would’ve worked?

“You thought it was Jack,” Noreen said petulantly, as though she could read Evelyn’s mind.

They’d all believed it was Jack. A well-placed pin, a cellar on Jack’s land. And then Jack going missing at exactly the right time. “Did you steal Jack’s pin?”

“That was pretty easy,” Noreen said, sounding proud of herself, and sounding more like the adult Evelyn was used to hearing at the police station.

It made her nervous how fluidly Noreen was shifting between the two. The adult who worked with the cops and the child who’d watched first her dad and then her uncle abduct young girls.

“Did you lure him out here, too, so your uncle could knock him out and drag him down here?” At least she hoped he was only unconscious. The longer she talked without hearing any movement at all, the more concerned she became that Jack would never move again.

Noreen rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Evelyn. Here I am, doing all this work to make sure everything doesn’t come out. And I shouldn’t even have bothered. You’re just like Jack. You don’t have a clue, do you?”

Dread rose up in Evelyn’s chest. “You led the police to Lauren. You probably arranged it so Mandy could escape, didn’t you? To protect them?”

Noreen nodded somberly. “I did. They knew what would happen if they told on me, but I didn’t want either of them to get hurt. When Brittany didn’t work out...” She shuddered.

“Brittany’s death was an accident, right?”

Tears welled up in Noreen’s eyes. “Yes. And then with Lauren and Mandy, I just knew. I knew they weren’t going to work, either. They wouldn’t play along. And I didn’t want anything to happen to them.”

“What would have happened to them?” Evelyn pressed.

“I might have hurt them,” Noreen said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. She met Evelyn’s gaze, her eyes huge and regretful. “The way I hurt Brittany. I didn’t mean for her to die.”

Noreen hung her head. “I just wanted my sister.”

Understanding and a brand-new fear darted through Evelyn. “You’re the one who took over where your dad left off. You’re the Nursery Rhyme Killer now, aren’t you, Noreen?”

Twenty-Six

T
he barn had no windows.

Kyle frowned as he finished walking around it. There was no way to see inside. As he started to head back to the drive, a squishing sound caught his attention. Footsteps in the mud.

Kyle pulled his weapon, simultaneously lifting his flashlight, revealing Frank Abbott’s face. Kyle quickly ran the flashlight down Frank’s button-up, worn loosely over a T-shirt, to his hands. Empty.

“What are you doing here?” Frank asked.

Kyle strode closer, until he was a foot away from Frank. Something about Frank’s tone set off Kyle’s internal warning system, so he didn’t holster his weapon.

“Can you put that away?” Frank asked, and Kyle realized what was making him suspicious.

Frank seemed too unconcerned. Too unsurprised.

“Why are you here, anyway?”

“I’m looking for Evelyn Baine,” Kyle replied, still holding his Glock loosely at his side. He kept his tone conversational, too, but looked at him in a way he’d perfected before HRT, when he’d worked counterterror. A warning that Frank didn’t want to find out what would happen if he lied. “Do we need to have a conversation about the penalties for harming a federal agent?”

Frank scowled, pasting an unimpressed expression on his face. But the eyes gave him away. They widened, then darted nervously to the gun before squinting back at Kyle.

“Haven’t seen her,” Frank said.

Kyle took a step closer, studying Frank intently. “You sure about that?”

Frank nodded, held his hands up. “Yeah, positive. I haven’t seen her since I left the station.”

He was hiding something, Kyle could tell, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t about Evelyn. He was a dead end.

Just to be sure, Kyle asked, “Whose car is in your drive?”

Frank shuffled his feet. “My niece. She stopped by to check on me. She was exhausted, so I told her to sleep in the guest room and go home tomorrow.”

“Where’s your car?”

“In the barn.”

Kyle studied him, waiting for Frank to shuffle nervously again, but he didn’t. “I want to talk to your niece.”

“She worked forty hours straight! She’s sleeping and I’m not waking her,” Frank said.

“She might know where Evelyn is.”

“She’s been here for hours. After everything that girl’s been through, she deserves a little peace.”

“What has she been through?”

Frank folded his arms over his chest. “She’s worked this case harder than anyone, that’s what I mean.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You’re a fed. You must have heard the story. You know why she got a job at the police station. How the old police chief felt sorry for her, taking care of her dad for so many years. Last year, she had to foreclose on his house, and now she’s got to work a case like this!”

Kyle pictured the for sale by bank sign on the house next to the Bullock field. “She lived next door to you?”

Frank looked at his feet. “Yes, until she got buried in his debt and had to get an apartment. Now, she lives right by the police station, as if she doesn’t take work home often enough. Listen, I don’t know where Evelyn is. But she’s not here.”

“Can I search the house?”

“Fine, you can go in,” Frank ground out. “But you’re staying out of my spare bedroom. You can’t wake my niece.”

Kyle nodded. He’d heard from Greg how Frank had let officers search his home and barn before. His acceptance was too immediate, his expression too nonchalant. Evelyn wasn’t in there.

“Cops will be here in five minutes,” he told Frank, then holstered his Glock and started to turn toward his car. He’d call them on the road and have them search the house, just in case.

Frank also started to turn. As he did, the button-up shirt caught in a gust of wind and blew open, uncovering a weapon tucked in his waistband. A SIG.

Kyle began to pivot back, but Frank moved fast, leaping toward him. He had twenty years on Kyle, but plenty of upper-body muscle, and he hit like a pro football player.

The tackle put Kyle on the ground and Frank reached for the SIG.

That was his second mistake. His first mistake was tackling an HRT agent.

Kyle shifted his weight fast, knocking Frank off him and off balance. Quickly, he grabbed Frank’s gun hand, twisting hard.

Frank yelped and the gun dropped from his hand.

Keeping the pressure on Frank’s wrist—obviously broken—Kyle got a knee underneath him and turned Frank until the man was lying on his back.

Then Kyle stood, twisting Frank’s arm the other way and flipping him onto his stomach. “Where the hell is Evelyn?”

“I don’t know.” Frank swore into the mud.

Kyle got his handcuffs out of their case and snapped them on Frank’s broken wrist, then onto the other one. “You had her weapon.”

“No, I didn’t,” Frank said, but his voice shook. From pain or because he was lying, Kyle couldn’t tell. But as Kyle tucked the weapon into his waistband, he knew he was right. The weapon was a SIG Sauer P228. Most FBI agents carried Glocks, but not Evelyn. She liked the SIG.

Sure, Frank could own one, too. However, he was a big guy and the P228 was a weapon preferred by female agents because it was smaller than the normal P226.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Frank insisted again.

So, Kyle levered Frank to his feet, pulling him up by his arms, which would be horribly painful on his newly broken wrist.

“I don’t know,” Frank said a third time, his voice high-pitched with pain.

Kyle spun the man around.

There were tears shimmering in Frank’s eyes, but Kyle could see honesty there, too. He truly didn’t know where she was.

* * *

“I don’t like that name,” Noreen pouted. “My father didn’t like it, either. The nursery rhymes were supposed to explain everything. He always told me they should’ve called him the Nursery Rhyme Savior.”

Panic fluttered in Evelyn’s stomach, mingled with anger. Anger at herself for having profiled the case so incorrectly. Of every case she’d ever had, this was the one that had defined her whole life. And she’d screwed it up!

If she died down here, would Noreen get away? Would anyone ever really know what had happened to Cassie and all the other girls?

The anger tightened all her muscles. Her hands shook with the sudden, overpowering need to rush Noreen.

It was one thing when she’d thought of Noreen as a manipulated, unwilling accomplice. A damaged girl who’d been under the thumb of first her psychotic father and then, later, her equally criminal uncle.

But that wasn’t the truth at all. The truth was, Noreen was as culpable as her father. She’d known what he was doing eighteen years ago. And instead of telling anyone, she’d stayed silent. Then she’d done exactly the same thing to three other girls once she grew up.

The fury spread, until her chest hurt and she felt sick. Until she knew her hatred blasted from her eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that, Evelyn,” Noreen said softly, her little-girl voice back. “If their parents had been watching like they should have, I never could’ve taken any of them. It’s their fault, those awful parents! Not mine. They deserved to be punished.”

Anger flashed across Noreen’s face. “None of them deserved their daughters back. But maybe now, they’ll learn. Maybe they’ll take care of those girls like they should.”

How delusional was Noreen? Evelyn bit her tongue to keep the question in. It didn’t matter what Noreen really believed and what she was just saying to rationalize her crimes. All that mattered was getting out of this cellar so Evelyn could make sure Noreen was locked up for the rest of her life.

It wouldn’t be down in a pitch-black cellar, never knowing if anyone would return for her or if she’d slowly starve to death in the dark. Never knowing what would happen when that cellar door opened, what pain or torture was coming. Never knowing if she’d ever see her family again—or knowing if she’d live to see another day.

That was what Noreen deserved, but Evelyn would have to settle for behind bars or, more likely, a psychiatric facility. Her gaze locked on Noreen’s gun and she started breathing faster, her hands twitching with the desire to lunge for it. To use it.

“Don’t even think about it,” Noreen snarled. It was as if a switch had flipped and she was back in the persona she usually showed the world, only less timid, less tentative. “You try to take this gun and I’ll pull the trigger.” She gestured vaguely toward the back of the cellar. “Jack taught me how to shoot. I’m good.”

“Then how can you do this to him?” Evelyn asked, willing her heart rate back to normal, trying to ease the pain and anger eating at her.

Noreen shrugged. “He came here looking for Frank. I could see it in his eyes when he showed up this morning. He knew he’d missed something. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was. I had to take care of him before he figured it out and realized it wasn’t my uncle.”

“How did you get him down here?” Had Frank known? Had Frank helped? How had Noreen lugged Jack down here? He was much bigger than she was. There was no way she’d dragged him down that ladder.

Noreen giggled again. “I played all innocent, started crying. I told him I’d found something on my uncle’s property. I took him out here to see and acted scared to go down. He went in first, gun out, looking for anyone inside. I hit him over the head.” Regret appeared briefly on Noreen’s face, then she blinked it away. “I had to do it.”

“That’s when you decided to frame him?”

“No. I decided that a while ago.” She scowled at Evelyn. “That was
your
fault. You were getting too close. I tried to get rid of you.”

“
You
shot at me?”

“Yeah. I missed, but don’t let that fool you. The window messed me up, threw off my shot. At the range, I hit the bull’s-eye every time.”

Better get off the topic of guns. Evelyn asked quickly, “What does that have to do with Jack?”

“I was just going to try to get rid of you again, because no one else was getting close. No one else had a clue. But Jack called me that night as I was driving home, with questions about the case, and he said you two had talked about my sister. I was worried that if you kept digging, eventually you’d see the truth. Or at least I thought you would. Guess I overestimated you.”

Evelyn gritted her teeth, forced herself not to snap back. It was true. She
had
missed this. If Noreen hadn’t held a gun on her, would she ever have realized the truth?

She felt sick with doubt. Doubt at the one thing in her life she was most certain of—her ability as a profiler.

Maybe she wasn’t the profiler she’d believed she was. Maybe Dan had been right from the beginning and a more experienced profiler had been needed here. Had her insistence on coming to Rose Bay destroyed the case? If Noreen got away with everything, it would be all her fault.

“I was going to try again,” Noreen repeated. “But I knew I had to wait until dark. So, in the meantime, I had to stay a step ahead of you. I didn’t want to tell you my sister was dead, but I sure as hell didn’t want you figuring it out on your own. And I knew I could make you think it was my uncle.” She smiled. “Which you did.”

The smile fell. “I thought that would buy me time and I could follow you back to the hotel again, wait until you got out of your car. Then that other profiler showed up, and I realized I had to come up with a new plan. Jack was the obvious choice. My dad was going to frame his dad. So I picked Jack. It just made sense, since the cellar was on his land now.”

Noreen sighed. “It’s too bad, really, because Jack’s always been nice to me. But I have to protect the secret. There are still girls to save.” Her tone grew wistful. “I’ll have to look for Peggy somewhere else now.”

“That’ll draw attention to you, leaving as soon as the abductions stop,” Evelyn said.

Noreen smiled, a tight, disturbing smile. “Oh, I’ll wait until Jack is found. Everyone knew we were friends. I’ll claim it’s too much for me to stay now. I’ll go somewhere else. I’ll have to stop leaving the notes, though.” She glanced up. “Sorry, Dad.”

Evelyn got ready to lunge, but Noreen’s gaze was back on her too fast.

Keep her talking,
Evelyn told herself as suspicion started to show in Noreen’s eyes.

Evelyn asked the first question she could think of. “Did your dad train you for this?”

Noreen stared at her, lips stretching in a flat smile. “I know what you’re doing, Evelyn.” She waved the gun in a circle. “But I haven’t been able to talk about this, and it’s nice to finally tell someone. It seems right that it’s you.”

Evelyn felt herself gape at Noreen.

“It does,” Noreen said. “You searched so hard for Cassie. It only seems fair that you should know before...Well, anyway, no, my dad didn’t train me. After he got sick, he didn’t talk about it at all. I knew he was secretly hoping he’d get better and be able to bring me another sister, but he never did.”

She gave a heavy sigh. “He died feeling like he’d failed me. And I was mad at him for years, for not letting me keep one of the girls he’d brought me before. For leaving me all alone. And when I lost his house...”

She broke off on a sob, her gun hand shaking, then stiffened and continued. “But it turned out to be okay, because when I was cleaning out the house, it just hit me what I needed to do. I realized it didn’t have to be over, especially when I packed up his old paper and his computer. And a couple of months ago, when you called and requested the case file, I was the one who dug it out.”

Evelyn felt the blood drain from her face. Had
she
pushed Noreen into taking that final step?

“I’d been trying to find a legitimate way to go through the notes again. I have access to the evidence, of course, but we do keep logs. And I didn’t want my name on them without a reason.” She smiled wistfully. “But that gave me the time to really memorize them all, make sure I could imitate everything, make sure I remembered it all.” Noreen’s eyes grew unfocused, as if she were looking into the past.

Trying to push back the guilt, Evelyn moved subtly, trying to work out the kinks in her legs, which had started to tingle from being awkwardly folded for so long.