Part 19 (1/2)
”You can find out. I know you can. I want you to go to El Paso and talk to Chief Blake. I want you to tell him that we have to give that information to the task force. I'll try very hard to remember what he talked about, anything that might help identify him. I was in that place for three days.”
He didn't speak for several seconds. ”Grace, what purpose would it serve to open the file twelve years after the fact?” he argued. ”We've got DNA evidence from the latest victim. We've got leads. If they open that file, someone's going to let the cat out of the bag. Any gossip about the case would put you in danger. He might come back and kill you, to silence you.”
”I know that,” she replied. ”But he's killed a lot of little girls,” she said sadly. ”Maybe I could have saved some of them if...”
”Stop right there,” he said firmly, catching her cold fingers in his own. ”Child predators are everywhere. You couldn't prevent a kidnapping if you were living in the same town as the perpetrator right now! There's been plenty of press coverage about this predator. Parents know to watch out for their children, but this guy is very smart. Warning people won't stop him.”
She s.h.i.+fted. ”Maybe not. I do think I might have been his first victim,” she continued. ”He was nervous the last day he kept me. He used a pocketknife, but I'd gained a lot of weight that year. I had a fat stomach and it saved my life. He left me for dead, panicked and ran. I managed to scream. Someone heard me and I was found in time.” She stared into the darkness. ”He took me right out of my own bed, in the middle of the night, with my grandmother sleeping in the room beside mine. If she hadn't been drinking, she might have heard him. She hated me for the rest of her life, because everybody knew she'd been too drunk to lock up properly. She pretended to be such a moral pillar of society. Then I got abducted and she was exposed.”
”She should have been charged with criminal negligence,” he snapped.
”She's dead. Everybody's dead but me, Rick,” she said sadly. ”It doesn't matter anymore. Catching this lunatic does. You have to make Chief Blake tell you where that file is. There may be something in it that will give you a clue leading to the killer, especially if I really was his first victim. He might have made one mistake that he's too savvy to make now. And that one mistake might help you catch him.”
He smiled gently. ”You're quite a lady.”
She leaned against his shoulder. It was the first time she'd ever touched him voluntarily. He was a sweet man. ”I wish I could be what you want me to be, Rick,” she said honestly. ”You're the nicest man I know.”
His heart ached. Having her curled up beside him so trusting, made him feel humble. He wanted to wrap her up against him and kiss her until she moaned, and make her love him. But it was never going to happen. He loved. She didn't. She was only his friend. But even that was better than nothing.
His arm slid around her hesitantly, resting there when she didn't protest. His hearth ammered at his ribs, but he drew her close in a comforting, platonic way. ”You're the nicest woman I know,” he replied.
He heard her soft sigh as she relaxed against his shoulder. It was sweeter than honey, this interlude. At least she liked him. She trusted him. Who could say that one day she wouldn't realize what a good catch he was. He just had to be patient and not rush his fences.
He rocked the swing back into motion. Around them, the night was peaceful and quiet.
IN THE DAYS that followed, Garon went to work trying not to think about Grace. He turned out with everyone else to respond to a new bank robbery. It was the same crew, with automatic weapons. This time they wounded a guard and a customer. He gave his squad a pep talk and had four of them staking out banks. In the meantime, he coordinated with the serial killer task force, organized his cases and doled a.s.signments out to his squad, escorted visiting dignitaries around town, caught up some of his paperwork. But his conscience still hurt about Grace. He could have been less cruel. She was like a child, in so many ways. She wasn't used to people deliberately hurting her. Maybe it was like Marquez said, it was a coincidence that she'd been at the same places he was.
Two weeks after she left town, his brother Cash called him one afternoon and invited him over to the police station.
”Why here and not at home?” he asked his brother with a smile when he walked into the office.
Cash didn't smile back. He was somber. He closed his office door and sat down behind his desk.
”Marquez flew to El Paso and talked to our cousin Chet Blake,” Cash said. He had his hands folded over a manila file folder. ”There was an attempted child murder here in Jacobsville twelve years ago. It's identical to the case you and Marquez are working. The file was sealed and hidden, because Chet was afraid the man would come back and finish off the child if he knew she survived.”
Garon frowned. ”The child lived? There's a witness?”
”Yes,” Cash replied. ”It's a tragic case. She was abducted out of her own bed and carried to an abandoned cabin just outside town. She was held there for three days,” he said with tight lips. ”n.o.body knows what he did to her. She never spoke of it to anyone. Her injuries were life-threatening. She spent weeks in the hospital. There was a search for the perpetrator, but they never found him. He just vanished.”
”The child was a girl?” he asked.
”Yes. She was twelve at the time. Like your other victims, she had long blond hair and light colored eyes.”
”Why in G.o.d's name didn't they share that information with the Bureau?” Garon demanded hotly. ”It might have saved lives! Especially with a living witness who could identify him!”
”She was blindfolded,” Cash said. ”The whole time. She heard his voice. That's all.”
”But to cover it up...!”
”Jacobsville is a small town, and her people were powerful,” he said. ”You know Chet. He doesn't like confrontations. He was told what to do, and he did it. Against his better judgment, I might add.”
Garon let out a rough sigh. ”Well, what's in the file? Is there anything about a red ribbon?”
”Yes.” Cash slid the file folder across the desk. He was watching Garon with an odd expression.
Garon couldn't decide why until he opened the file folder and saw the first of the photographs that were taken at the scene of the crime, and of the child at the time of her rescue.
The little girl was pudgy, as children sometimes are when they reach the outer edge of adolescence. She was covered with blood. Her long blond hair was matted with it. Her tank top was shredded, like her cotton shorts. There was dirt on her legs and her bare feet. The next series of photos were taken in the hospital, without her clothing. Her stomach showed multiple stab wounds. There were bruises all over her arms and legs. She had a black eye, and her mouth was b.l.o.o.d.y. There was blood around the tiny, pink buds of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
The damage matched that of the dead child Garon had seen at the autopsy, except that this poor victim had lived. He studied the photos and then turned to lift the police report, which gave the child's name.
Garon's breath exploded in the silence of the office. His heart seemed to stop beating. The child's name was Grace. Grace Carver.
Memories flashed in front of his eyes. Grace, shy and afraid of him.
Grace, letting him pick her up with wide, frightened eyes. Grace, clinging to him. Grace, in his arms, in his bed, loving him. Grace holding his hand and radiating joy. Grace, cringing from him in Barbara's Cafe...!
The puzzle fell into place. Grace was innocent because she'd been abducted, a.s.saulted and very nearly killed by a homicidal maniac. And he'd made light of her experience. Worse, he'd seduced her and then pushed her out of his life, like a man discarding a used towel.
He put his face in his hands and tried to justify what he'd done to that poor, tortured soul out of his own fear that she was getting too close to him. G.o.d in heaven, he thought poignantly, what have I done!
Cash wasn't blind. He'd heard the gossip about Garon and Grace, especially in the past couple of weeks since she'd been forced to leave town to stop the whispers. He and Garon weren't close, so he hadn't asked any questions. But the man across from him didn't seem very arrogant now.
Garon leaned back in his chair. His eyes were blank. He'd lost color in his lean face. The shock was all too apparent.
He was trying to come to grips with his own actions. No wonder he'd been an outcast after his treatment of Grace. The important people in this town knew the truth of what had happened to her. They were delighted that she'd found someone who could heal her emotional wounds, give her a little happiness. It hadn't been malicious gossip about the two of them, or an attempt to marry them off. It had been happiness that, after all Grace had endured, she might have a loving future to comfort the pain of her past.
Instead she'd been kicked in the teeth one more time by fate. By Garon.
Garon let out a slow breath.
”Marquez wanted to tell you himself,” Cash remarked after a minute. ”But I didn't trust him that close to you, once he knew the facts of the case.”
Garon looked at his brother blankly. ”He didn't know?”
Cash shook his head. ”Grace told no one. Chet gave him the details, along with this file. To date, not one person knows what that animal did to her in the three days he kept her a prisoner.”
He was remembering the dead child, the horrible mutilation of her young body. That could have been Grace. She could have been dead, instead of emotionally and s.e.xually crippled and left for dead. It was like a nightmare. He'd never thought of himself as a monster. Before.
”Was there any trace evidence?” he asked, forcing his numb brain to work.
”Yes. I'd bet my baton that the DNA will match what you found on the latest victim.”
”DNA.” He stared at Cash while the truth drilled a hole in his heart. ”DNA.” His teeth ground together. The son of a b.i.t.c.h had raped Grace...!
He got up from the chair in one powerful movement, almost shaking with rage and self-loathing.