Chapter 26
WYATT HAD STARTED to feel the burn of an endless night. He sat in his boss’s office, head sagging, as he did his best to talk his way through a case that posed way too many questions and not nearly enough answers.
“You’re sure this woman is Veronica Sellers?” Sheriff Rober asked now. “A missing girl from thirty years ago?”
“According to her fingerprints, yes.”
“You think she was kidnapped by some high-end madam, imprisoned in the woman’s home-slash-brothel until she eventually escaped. At which time she made it to New Orleans, where she married this guy Thomas, and, what, started over? Lived happily ever after for twenty-two years, until six months ago, when Thomas decided to kill her, resulting in three accidents and now a house fire.”
Wyatt nodded, though something about hearing his case as a laundry list of crimes . . .
“Can one girl be so unlucky?” the sheriff asked bluntly.
“I have no idea, sir.”
“Seems to me, you really got two cases. You have what happened thirty years ago. The kidnapping, followed by the sex crimes. Then you have today. The single MVA followed by arson. I guess followed by the missing husband.”
“We have an APB out on Thomas Frank now, as well as a trace on his cell phone. One way or another, we’ll find him.”
“But you don’t have him yet. What you have is a bunch of stories from an injured woman’s mind.”
“We know the car accident was more than an accident,” Wyatt interjected. “The stability system was disabled, the vehicle placed in neutral and most likely given a shove down the hill. That implies a second person had to be present at the time of the accident.”
“The husband again?”
“Who was very reluctant to turn over his rain jacket and went out of his way to retrieve his wife’s own clothes from that night, I believe to further conceal any evidence of his actions. Add to that him torching his own home and running for it the second we homed in on him, and yeah, he looks pretty guilty to me.”
“Why?” Sheriff Rober asked. “Twenty-two years later, what changed? Forget the wild stories of brothels and missing kids. Return to the basics. Why does a husband kill his wife?”
“Insurance money, revenge, wanting out of the marriage but not wanting to divvy up assets.” Wyatt shrugged. “We have looked at the basics, trust me. At the moment, there’s no sign of a large life insurance policy, nor any sign that either of the Franks was involved in extramarital activities. Honestly, sir, my best guess is that whatever’s happening now ties back to what happened thirty years ago.”
“You think Thomas Frank was part of this so-called dollhouse?”
“Maybe. Of course, thirty years ago, he was just a kid himself. Which makes things more complicated.”
“Fellow victim? Sex trafficking isn’t just about girls.”
“I don’t know. Kevin is running a deeper background on the Franks now. According to Thomas, he and Nicky met and married twenty-two years ago in New Orleans. Upon further investigation, however, Thomas Frank doesn’t show any activity under that name until twenty years ago. As in he never had a credit card or a driver’s license until 1995. Same with Nicole Frank.”
“Fake identities?”
“Most likely. Well done, deep enough to stand up to cursory inspection, but when you start filling in the details . . . Sure, Thomas Frank has a birth certificate. But he still never lived until the past two decades.”
“Ask the wife about it?”
“Given the state of her memory, not sure how productive, or reliable, that conversation would be.”
“Meaning, all the more reason to find Thomas and grill him.”
“Agreed.”
“So what’s your game plan?” the sheriff asked. “You got a missing suspect and a scrambled victim. What next?”
“I need to contact the National Center for Missing Children, of course. Let them know about Veronica Sellers. Thought I might see if they could send over the original documents on the missing persons case. Maybe by going through the original witness statements, I can find something that will give me some traction on what’s going on now.”
“You could,” the sheriff said, but he was nodding in a way that Wyatt already knew meant he disagreed. “You have to call them, true. And maybe they’ll agree to give you access to some old case file. But consider this. Moment you call, they’re assembling a task force in a conference room. That task force is then going to locate northern New Hampshire on a map. By evening, they’ll be on a plane. First thing tomorrow morning, they’ll be walking through our front door. At which time, maybe they’ll hand you a box of paperwork. But definitely they’re going to take your best witness, Nicky Frank, as well as this entire case, away from you. Just like that.”
Wyatt sighed, then nodded heavily. The sheriff was right, of course. The recovery of a kid, missing thirty years, was big news. Hold-a-press-conference-wearing-their-best-federal-suits, taking-full- federal-credit kind of news. A mere county sheriff’s department didn’t stand a chance.
“Can you locate this brothel?” the sheriff asked now. “You got a description, something concrete that puts it in our county, gives us half a chance?”
“I got nothing,” Wyatt confessed. “Nicky described the home as a Victorian mansion, driving distance from Boston. Run by a madam who looks like a china doll, and also occupied by an evil roommate named Chelsea. That’s what we know.”
“Please don’t tell the feds that.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you have?” the sheriff pressed.
Wyatt was tired. He’d been up all night, and the coffee was wearing off. He stared at his boss blankly.
“You got Nicky Frank,” the sheriff spelled out for him. “Or Veronica Sellers, or whatever the hell her name is. That’s what you have; they don’t.”
“You mean the world’s most unreliable witness?”
“Whatever’s going on here, she holds the key. Get a doctor. Get a hypnotist, a therapist, whatever it takes. But start pushing, and don’t stop until you get some real answers out of her, including what’s up with the husband. You have less than twenty-four hours to find answers, Sergeant. Time to make your play.”
* * *
WYATT TURNED OVER the matter in his mind as he walked down the second-floor corridor to his own modest office. He didn’t like the idea of a hypnotist. He agreed with Nicky; her mind was messed up enough. But a therapist? Maybe an expert in PTSD? Could someone like that possibly coax Nicky into a walk down memory lane that finally ended with some answers? Of course, how to locate such a therapist and get him or her to his office ASAP? Clock was ticking, so definitely no rest for the wicked on this one.
He’d just made it to his office door, was debating whether more coffee would help or hurt at this point, when Kevin burst through the stairwell ahead of him.
“We got him.”
“Who?”
“Thomas Frank. Patrol officer spotted his vehicle parked behind a strip motel, Route 302, forty minutes north.”
Wyatt forgot all about caffeine. Quick swipe of his car keys off the corner of his desk; then he and Kevin were hammering down the stairs toward the parking lot.
“Did the officer approach him?” Wyatt asked as they hit ground level.
“Nah, called it in. Since you were tied up with the big boss, I instructed him to lay low, keep eyes on, but remain out of sight. He’s gonna work on getting the exact room number for us.”
“Perfect. All right. Mobilize the troops. We’re gonna want patrol cars north and south in case he runs for it. In the meantime, this is our party. We make the first contact.”
They clambered into the county SUV, Wyatt behind the wheel, Kevin working the radio. Forty minutes north. Wyatt figured he could make that thirty. And he did.
* * *
KEVIN HAD JUST spotted the long, white-painted strip motel on the left, when Thomas Frank’s silver Suburban turned out of the parking lot right in front of them.
“There, that’s him!” Wyatt called out. The driver didn’t appear spooked, but was driving at a moderate pace. Wyatt hit the sirens, however, and all that changed.
The Suburban shot forward, V8 engine gunning. Apparently, Thomas Frank wasn’t done running just yet.
“What the hell did you do, man?” Wyatt muttered under his breath. “Because you’re about to go down the hard way.”
Wyatt hit the accelerator, easily closing the gap. Beside him, Kevin was already alerting the two patrol cars five miles north that the chase was on. They careened past a gas station/local deli, a diner and a campsite; then civilization thinned out, and it was full speed ahead.
Sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour on the winding road. The Suburban took one corner too fast, rocking onto two wheels. For one second, it remained suspended in precarious balance, then slammed back to four tires on the ground, lurching awkwardly forward. Another sharp left, followed by a winding right. As the Suburban slipped from eighty to sixty to eighty again.
Wyatt felt calm and focused, the way he always did on the hunt. His hands were steady on the wheel, his breathing controlled. This was his element. The moment a good officer trained and, frankly, lived for.
In contrast, the Suburban was beginning to weave erratically. Panic, exhaustion, impairment, but Thomas Frank appeared to be losing it.
The Suburban swung wildly into the left-hand lane. An oncoming car blared its horn, then belatedly spotted the pursuing police vehicle and pulled over. Better late than never, as the saying went.
Now the Suburban overcorrected to the right, skidding almost sideways across the road, two wheels crunching into the soft shoulder and making it fishtail wildly.
Wyatt backed off his speed, frowning at the Suburban’s out-of-control maneuvers. Suddenly, he wasn’t feeling so good about things. In fact . . .
A tractor-trailer appeared ahead. Logging truck, just coming around the corner, a little wide with its long, heavy load bearing down upon the Suburban.
“Don’t you dare, don’t you dare!” Wyatt shouted at Thomas Frank.
Who’d just swung his Suburban back into the path of the oncoming semi, as if playing chicken with a tractor-trailer was a good idea. In fact, better than surrendering to the local cops.
Wyatt could think of only one more thing to do. Not a great idea. Not his best idea. But in the spur of the moment . . .
He shoved the accelerator to the floor, fully committing 202 horsepower to his bidding. As he pulled alongside the lumbering Suburban’s dark-tinted passenger window. No view of Thomas. Wild-eyed with desperation, or dead set with determination, Wyatt had no way to know. And no time to find out.
The logging truck hit its brakes, sounding its deep horn. As Wyatt drove his own vehicle into the side of the Suburban. The crunch and grind of metal. A frozen instant of time, when neither vehicle gave way, but remained locked together with the other, a twin-size target for the oncoming semi. Wyatt lifted his foot from the gas, swerved one last time into the side of the Suburban. Then . . .
The Suburban was knocked left. Veered off the road onto the tree-lined shoulder just as the logging truck squealed through the space it used to occupy. Wyatt fought with his own vehicle, steady, steady, snap, back into his own lane, blowing by the logging truck as Kevin roared a few words the Brain rarely said.
Wyatt hit the brakes. His vehicle stopped. The logging truck stopped.
The world stopped.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Kevin got on the radio and called for backup.
* * *
THE SILVER SUBURBAN had done a face-plant into a tree. The hood was a crumpled mess, steam rising, fluids flushing down, as if in its last moments, the vehicle had lost control of its bowels.
Wyatt looped around to the driver’s side door, Kevin assuming cover position. In the distance they could already hear the sound of approaching sirens.
Driver’s side window wasn’t broken, which put Wyatt at a disadvantage. He couldn’t completely see inside, but it appeared the driver was slumped over the wheel. He gestured to Kevin, then did the count with his fingers. On three, Wyatt took one fluid step forward, jerked open the door, then twisted behind it for cover.
As the driver toppled out of the car onto the ground.
“Thomas Frank, you’re under arrest,” Wyatt barked out loudly.
Except when he stepped forward, it wasn’t Thomas Frank who lay before him.
* * *
IT TOOK ANOTHER thirty minutes to work it out. Despite the first officer’s best intentions, Thomas Frank must’ve made him. Rather than run for it, he’d knocked on the door of the room next to his. Introduced himself to Brad Kittle, who, it turned out, had spent most of the morning doping up. When a strange dude offered him the keys to his car, that had seemed the best thing that had ever happened to good old Brad. He’d taken the keys. When the dude suggested he go for a test drive, even better.
Except, of course, then there had been sirens. Things got a little fuzzy for Brad after that. Mostly, he was high, he knew he was high, and, oh yeah, he was driving a car that wasn’t his while having a suspended license. Even his baked brain had understood that could be a problem.
So he’d run for it. Real exciting, like Hollywood, he’d informed them, as the blood had poured from multiple cuts down his face, and yet, thanks to his morning binge, he still wasn’t feeling any pain.
“Didn’t even know a Suburban could drive that fucking fast,” he’d exclaimed. “I mean, it’s like supercharging a rhino, man. A beast, swerving around this corner, that corner. Dude, I thought I was gonna die. Cool!”
Wyatt and Kevin gave up on the pothead, returned to the motel. The original reporting officer had greeted them in the parking lot, very excited to hear how things had turned out. Wyatt and Kevin didn’t talk. They got Thomas’s room number. They crashed through the door, and they discovered exactly what they expected to find. An empty room, Thomas Frank nowhere in sight.
“Door-to-door,” Wyatt had instructed the uniformed officer. “Get everyone out of their rooms. Thomas didn’t just disappear. He stole a car, copped a ride, something. Get everyone talking until you know exactly how he left this property. Then report back to me immediately. We gotta update the APB.”
A very subdued officer went to do as he was told.
Kevin called for the evidence techs to process the room; then they returned to what they did have: one wrecked Suburban, their lone link to Thomas Frank. They both started searching.
Wyatt took the front seats, Kevin the rear bench seat. Like his wife’s, Thomas’s tastes ran toward the neat and tidy. No food wrappers, crumpled-up receipts or discarded maps.
Glove compartment yielded the normal vehicle operations manual, insurance card and valid registration in the name of Thomas Frank. Wyatt picked up a black baseball cap from the floor, still slightly damp to the touch. From Wednesday night’s storm, maybe wearing it when he followed, pursued, somehow tracked down his wife?
He also discovered an E-ZPass toll transponder; unfortunately, the only tolls in New Hampshire were to the south, so it couldn’t help them track local movements.
“Is it just me,” Wyatt muttered to Kevin, who’d moved on to the rear cargo area, “or is it almost as if the Franks were trained to leave no mark behind?”
“I got something.”
“Thank God.”
Wyatt gave up on the front, moved to the rear doors of the Suburban, where Kevin was currently standing.
“In the spare tire well. First item of interest.” Kevin held it up in gloved hands. “A collapsible shovel”—he gestured to the sales tags—“recently purchased.”
“Interesting. Thomas on his way to bury something?”
“Which brings us to item number two, a brown paper bag. Which . . .” Kevin started coughing heavily. “Smells like scotch. Blech.”
“The clothes.” Wyatt grabbed the bag. “Betting you now, Nicky’s clothes from Wednesday night.”
He donned gloves to open up the sack, which absolutely reeked. Of whiskey, wet earth and something worse.
He and Kevin weren’t talking anymore as Wyatt drew out a pair of mud-encrusted jeans, a black turtleneck, a gray fleece.
He gagged slightly as the odor became more pronounced. Blood. Definitely. Dried. Soaked into the fabric, now permeating the bag. From Nicky’s injuries that night? Or something else?
“Wyatt.” Kevin gestured to a crumpled object that had just fallen from the jeans. Wadded, sticky, nearly black in color. Except not black, of course, but a deep, dark red.
Wyatt used a pencil and took his time. As bit by bit, he unwrapped the blood-encrusted latex, until a familiar shape lay before them. Ripped, tattered, but nonetheless distinct.
The proverbial bloody glove.
“Just what the hell were they doing Wednesday night,” Kevin whispered, “that involves a collapsible shovel and bloody gloves?”
Wyatt didn’t say a word.