"How about shooting? Grab a bottle. Make some bets." A crooked half-smile. "Chance to win back your fifty bucks?"
That flicker of hope folded in on itself and curled up in the pit of my stomach. Last fall, after a hellish night when Wilkes had escaped us - only to kill another victim - Jack had taken me shooting at night, some anonymous strip of forest in Illinois, just the two of us, skeet-shooting beer cans as we chugged whiskey. Supposedly he'd been teaching me how to compensate for being intoxicated. An excuse - one that had fallen through quickly the drunker we got, goofing around, joking and betting, blowing off steam.
No one had ever done something like that for me before. No one had ever known me well enough to know it was exactly what I'd needed. Over the next few days, Jack had let down his guard enough to give me glimpses into his past, and I realized he'd already seen beyond my barriers, looked at that part of myself I kept so carefully hidden.
He'd seen the worst in me, and it didn't change anything. Or so it seemed at the time. Later I realized he'd only tried to help me that night because he'd needed me focused and on track, watching his back. The minute the job was over, he couldn't get away fast enough.
Now, here again was that same Jack, considerate and understanding, ready to do whatever it took to snap me out of this. But this time, I knew it wasn't because he gave a rat's ass how Sammi's death affected me, but because he was trapped. He was hiding out at the lodge, and he needed me focused and on track, watching his back.
Without a word, I opened the door and climbed out. He didn't follow.
I sat on my bed, hugging my knees, still dressed, watching the hours flip past. I didn't dare lie down for fear I'd sleep. With sleep would come the nightmares.
I'd woken Jack with them twice last fall and wouldn't risk it again. I considered sneaking downstairs for a roll of duct tape. I'd done that once, when I'd been desperate, but the off-chance that Jack might catch me made me stop. Sleeping with duct tape over your mouth? Crazy woman behavior.
The nightmares were always the same. I was running through an endless forest, trying in vain to get home, get my dad, save Amy. I hear Drew Aldrich right behind me, getting closer as the forest's edge stretched ever farther away.
That part never happened - he didn't chase me; he'd been too busy raping Amy in the cabin. I'd peered around the corner, seen him on her, heard her muffled screams, and I'd run. Left her there and run away. Left her to die. Saved myself.
A parade of therapists have tried to tell me otherwise. I'd been going for help, as I'd been taught, and that was the right thing to do. Everyone told me I'd done the smart thing - my father, Amy's father, even my mother had snapped, "Of course, you should have run. Don't be stupid."
I'd done what my father and every cop in our family had taught me from the time I was old enough to set foot outside alone. If anything happens, try to get away. Don't fight unless you absolutely have to. Run for help. Let us look after the rest.
I'd gotten help, but not in time. In the aftermath of Amy's death, I'd clung to that promise: let us look after the rest. Justice would be done, one way or another. Only it wasn't. Aldrich went free and all those cops who'd made me that promise let him walk away.
And justice for none.
Even as I considered ways to anonymously alert someone to Sammi's body, I heard the whispers of the past.
Is anyone really surprised?
Oh, I don't mean Amy brought this on herself, but...
Did you see the way she dressed? Only fourteen, flirting with everything in pants. And a cop's daughter no less. A Stafford. If they couldn't teach her better, no one could.
Some girls...
I'm not saying she brought it on herself...
I don't think Drew ever meant to hurt her. Things just got out of hand.
Now if it had been Nadia...
Yes, if it had been Nadia... There's a good girl. So polite. So helpful. A Stafford through and through. But he never touched her. That says something right there, doesn't it? Amy, with her tight skirts and her makeup...
Some girls...
Made to be broken.
I could drag Don Riley to Sammi's grave, show him her body, and it wouldn't change what he - and all of White Rock - thought of her. If there was any investigation, it would be quick, halfhearted at best.
As for Destiny, they'd claim she was somewhere in those woods. No one in White Rock was going to waste investigative efforts finding another Ernst brat. Right now, the only person who cared who killed her was the one who'd discovered her body.
Finding justice for Sammi wouldn't change what I'd done to Amy. But I could try.
At six, as my exhausted mind skated the border between reality and dreamland, the answer hit me and I jolted awake, certain I knew what had happened to Destiny.
The identity of Destiny's father was no mystery in White Rock. Sammi had been far from the perfect teen, but she could be counted on never to repeat her mother's mistakes, which meant she didn't screw every boy who looked her way. She had one boyfriend the year she got pregnant: Trent Drayton, whose parents owned the best land in the White Rock area.
When Destiny was born, it didn't take a genius to count back nine months and realize she'd been conceived when Trent had been spending Christmas holidays at the cottage. Even Mr. and Mrs. Drayton knew who Destiny's daddy was, though they'd spent all year threatening to sic their lawyer on anyone who said so. The family never paid a cent in support, and I suppose Sammi was too proud to claim Destiny's birthright. As for Trent, he'd been shipped off to UBC last fall after his father had found him a summer job in Vancouver.
The story sounds terribly romantic: rich boy, poor girl, star-crossed lovers... Not Sammi. She'd been raised to survive, not fantasize. When she met Trent, I'm pretty sure what she saw wasn't a prep-school Romeo, but her meal ticket out of White Rock. It's equally likely that Destiny's conception was no accident.
I'm not speaking ill of the dead. I could imagine being in Sammi's shoes, living in that house, a lifetime of Janie and her abuse, trapped in a nowhere town where everyone expects you to end up a drunken whore like your mother and her mother before her. God gave Sammi one asset: beauty. She'd be a fool not to use it, and Sammi was no fool - just a screwed-up kid with dreams of escaping the future everyone predicted for her.
So who would want Destiny? Trent Drayton's parents. After all, she was their granddaughter, white-trash mommy or not. How many times had they been to town since last fall and accidentally bumped into Sammi and their granddaughter? Seen her in worn hand-me-downs and a rusty stroller? Seen her going in and out of that hovel Sammi called home? With Sammi, Destiny had the most loving and attentive mother a child could want, but people like Frank and Lauren Drayton wouldn't see that. They'd see their flesh and blood growing up in poverty.
Sure, they could give Sammi some money and set her up in Peterborough, where they lived. But that would mean dealing with Sammi herself, treating her like a real person.
Taking Destiny legally was tricky. They'd need to prove Sammi was an unfit mother, which she wasn't. In the end, the Draytons would probably blow a huge wad of cash on legal fees only to be court-ordered to follow option one: providing for Sammi and her baby.
Why not spend that money on a more permanent solution? Get rid of Sammi for good, make it look like she'd run away, then tell the authorities that she'd handed Destiny to them on her way to a new life. Get some legal documents quietly drawn up, pay Janie to sign over her rights, and, boom, Frank and Lauren Drayton have adopted a beautiful baby girl.
I'd like to think no one would ever do such a thing. But I know better. There are people out there right now trying to find out how they can hire a hitman for jobs just like this. Got a problem? Put a bullet through it.
By seven, I was pulling out of the driveway heading to Peterborough.
Chapter Thirteen
Finding the Drayton home required nothing more than locating an area phone book. At a population of 130,000, Peterborough was s
till the kind of city where its wealthiest residents didn't fear putting their full names and addresses in the White Pages.
Locally, the Draytons were a big name. They owned Drayton Windows and Doors - a manufacturing plant that was one of the city's leading employers. By leading, I mean in terms of number of residents employed, not in wages or working conditions. I had a regular guest who worked at Drayton's factory and, for him and his wife, a weekend at the Red Oak was their only vacation. The nonunionized plant paid ten bucks an hour, a mere two dollars over the provincial minimum wage. Benefits included a discount on factory seconds and not much else.
Given the working conditions, one could assume that business was struggling and their only choice was to pay these low wages or shut down and put everyone out of work. But, having seen the Draytons' cottage, I strongly suspected their year-round residence wasn't going to be a modest bungalow.
The address led me a few kilometers beyond the official city limits. A stone wall marked the boundary between road and estate, but it wasn't more than three feet high - for show, not for privacy. No gate blocked the driveway. A metal grille was embedded at the end of the cement drive to keep the free-roaming horses in. On either side of the drive, a large brass plaque proclaimed The Draytons. If I lived in a place like this and kept my employees hovering on the poverty line, I'd be ashamed to put my name on the mailbox. But that's just me.
Beyond the gates, a lawn stretched over several acres. In the middle were two ponds, separated by a wooden bridge. In one, a fountain jetted into the sky. The other had a gazebo and a wooden dock with a paddle boat. Yes, the pond was big enough for a paddle boat.
Horses roamed free in the yard. Seeing that, I felt the first sting of envy. Not that I'm a horse person. I ride now and then, and have even considered rescuing a couple of dog-food-bound nags for the lodge, but I wouldn't count horse-ownership among my lifelong dreams. And, being practical, I'm not sure I'd want horses - and horse shit - in my front yard. Still, seeing the horses roaming free, it was like the picture-perfect image of wealthy country living, the kind you only see in Lotto 6/49 ads.
Behind the ponds, at the end of the winding concrete driveway, stood the house - a two-story stone country manor with a wraparound porch and huge bay windows. L-shaped, it was set at a forty-five-degree angle to the road, so the full size was proudly displayed to anyone drooling from his car.
To be fair, I should point out that the Draytons were renowned philanthropists in Peterborough. Every year, their company donated an entire thousand dollars to the United Way. And at Christmas, according to my guests, they held an employee skating party on their ponds and served free hot chocolate and day-old donuts. For this event, they rented Port-a-Poos, so no snowy-booted kids traipsed through the house. I understood the precaution. If I was an employee, I'd find as many excuses as possible to use the indoor washroom, accidentally spill hot chocolate on the Oriental carpet, and mash jelly donut on the spa towels.
Next door to the Drayton estate, a gravel driveway led to an empty lot separated from the estate by a stand of pines. I drove up it and parked behind the trees. From here, you could see that the driveway had once led to a house. The bones of the foundation poked up beneath a blanket of sod, like a prehistoric skeleton waiting to be unearthed. A small house, not more than a thousand square feet. Not exactly the Draytons' ideal neighbors, I'm sure. They'd probably bought out the residents and demolished the house.
My plan was simple: break in and look for signs of a baby. Like I've said, I didn't know much about babies, except that they needed their own special everything, from car seats to beds to bathing products. Breaking into the Drayton home, though, would be a big step up from illegally entering the Ernst residence. You spend this kind of money on a house and you might as well advertise in the Thieves Home Journal: "Hey, we got stuff, and lots of it," meaning the Draytons probably couldn't even get insurance without an alarm system.
Whatever the security features, though, I couldn't wait until dark. At night, Frank Drayton and the kids would be home. I needed to get in now and see proof that they had Destiny.
The house and garage backed onto forest, remnants of the former conservation area. All the lawn was up front, where people could admire it. The problem with this, as any security-conscious person could tell you, was that all an intruder had to do was cut through the forest and come out within a few feet of the Draytons' back door.
Minutes later, I was behind their garage, which was a miniature of the house, complete with large windows along the sides and back. Security tip number two: do not put windows on a garage. Why would you? Do you read the morning paper in there? All you've done is provide window-shopping for the casual thief. One glimpse inside the garage assured me that there were no cars present, which meant no one was home, the Draytons not being a one-car kind of family.
Getting past the security system was easy. They had one that kept people from opening the doors, but didn't do jack shit for the big bay windows at the back, left open on this sunny spring day.
I selected the back window farthest from the garage-side door and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. When the screen was out, I pushed the window up as far as it would go, hoisted myself inside, then replaced the screen and closed the window to the six-inch opening.
I inhaled and looked around. I was in a main-floor laundry, with the kitchen to my right.
On the drive, I'd compiled a mental list of all the baby items I could think of. If the Draytons hadn't gone public with their new baby yet, they might hide the obvious things like a crib or baby toys, but could easily slip up when it came to dirty clothing or bottles. A quick flip through the laundry baskets revealed no obvious baby clothes, so I moved on to the kitchen.
I checked the dishwasher for bottles, and the fridge and cupboards for baby food.
From the kitchen I moved through the dining room, doing a quick visual scan for any kind of feeding chair, then into the living room and family room, searching for toys or a playpen. In the center of the family room I stopped and inhaled. For someone unaccustomed to babies, the scent is obvious, be it spit-up or a wet diaper or baby shampoo and talcum powder. Here I smelled only wood cleaner, potpourri, and stale popcorn.
Next stop: the home office. I shuffled through papers, memos, and recent check stubs. While a check written to a hitman would clinch it nicely, no one would be stupid enough to leave such a thing lying around. What I looked for was anything with a baby connection - adoption forms or a receipt for baby supplies or the scribbled number of a local judge. When nothing suspicious popped up, I headed for the stairs.
The pin-neat bed and light layer of dust on the sports trophies told me the first bedroom belonged to Trent.
I glanced in the en suite bathroom, then moved on. The next hall door led to a walk-in closet with more towels and linens than we kept for the whole lodge, but no baby supplies. On to the main bath, where I checked for baby shampoos or diapers.
Across from the bathroom was another bedroom, this one belonging to a teenage girl. Trent 's sister. Again, I performed only a basic survey, in case a stray infant toy had been dropped behind the bed or in the suite. Nothing.
I looked more carefully in the guest room, in case they were using it as a makeshift nursery. No crib, no baby linens, no empty bottle kicked under the bed. And no baby smell.
The door across the hall was closed. I touched the handle, then noticed the master suite at the end of the hall. This room must belong to the younger brother. I'd have more luck with the master suite, so I moved on for now.
In Frank and Lauren's bedroom, I checked all the places someone could stash notes and receipts and scribbled phone numbers. No sign of a baby or anything connected to babyhood or adoption. I pulled a chair to the closet and looked on the top shelf.
Finally, standing on the chair, looking at stacks of dusty photo albums, I had to admit it. There was no baby here. My brain popped back with "yes, but you could check bank records, phone records..." I was grasp
ing at straws, unwilling to relinquish my one and only idea. I should have thought it through -
A noise cut me off in midthought. Not a car in the drive or a key turning in a door lock. A toilet flushing.
Chapter Fourteen
Rule one of breaking and entering: check the goddamned house for people.
The first tingle of alarm quickly evaporated. I wanted answers? Here was my source. I knew the Draytons had Destiny. What better proof than a confession? The toilet flush had come from downstairs. Either Lauren had returned, or she'd never left. As I crept to the hall doorway, I pulled out my gun. Then I concentrated on listening.
Footsteps padded across the hardwood floor. I ran a quick mental inventory on my knapsack. None of my supplies could be used for binding, but I'd seen bandage rolls in the main bathroom. They'd do.
A squeak came from below. A chair being reclined. Perfect. Lauren was relaxing, probably with a book or magazine, enjoying her morning coffee. I could slip up behind, put the gun to her head, and she'd never see me. I'd take the bandages, but only as a last resort. With someone like Lauren, the cold steel of a gun pressing against the back of her neck would be enough.
I took three steps toward the main bathroom.
"Mom?"
My heart slammed into my throat and I stopped so fast my shoe squeaked on the wood.
"Mom!" A racking cough, then a muttered, "How long does it take her to pick up medicine?"
The younger son, home from school, sick. No problem. He'd still know what happened to Destiny. I'd just -
The image flashed in my mind. Pressing the gun to the head of a teenage boy.
My God, what was I thinking?
I took a deep breath.
Destiny wasn't here. If she was, I would have found something. She wasn't here and the Draytons probably didn't have anything to do with her disappearance, and I'd been ready to hold a teenage boy at gunpoint to prove it.
I crept back into the master bedroom and looked out the window, which overlooked the back of the house. There was a two-foot-wide overhang between floors, more architectural than structural, and I wasn't sure whether it would hold my weight.