Winter Flower Read online

  By Monday morning, the police presence was mostly gone from the house—the FBI, and both State and Fairfax County Police had moved their headquarters for the search to the FBI field office in Arlington.

  It was late Tuesday afternoon when Lori called me to the phone. I’d slept briefly and fitfully the night before, and by this time I was running on empty. Cole was asleep, sprawled on the couch, exhaustion on his face.

  “Erin? It’s Agent Wilcox.”

  I flew to the phone, panic rising to my throat. “Agent Wilcox? Did you hear something?”

  He sighed. “No, ma’am. Nothing yet. I was actually calling because you’ll certainly hear on the news soon—Chase was released by the Fairfax County Police.”

  “What?” I cried. “Why?”

  “At this point, we don’t have any reason to suspect him. He voluntarily consented to searches of his apartment and his vehicle. His story checks out. We found nothing to indicate any involvement in hurting your daughter.”

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw something. I scrunched up my forehead, trying to push back the headache that was blooming behind my left temple.

  Cole stirred and looked up at me. Concern spread on his face. “Erin?”

  I couldn’t speak. I gasped and felt tears run down my face for the five hundredth time that day. “They’ve let Chase go.”

  Cole’s face went cold; his lips pressed together tightly, eyes narrowed. If I’d known then what he had already decided to do, would I have stopped him?

  I honestly don’t know.

  Cole

  I still don’t know if I regret what happened next. Given the same information, given the same circumstances, I’d probably do the same thing, no matter how awful it was.

  It was Wednesday morning. Brenna had been gone since Sunday, and Chase was free. I couldn’t wrap my mind around either of those things.

  “What can I do you for?” asked the man behind the counter in a thick Southern Virginia accent. He wore a camouflage cap emblazoned with a large logo: a red field with a white pistol on the left, American flag on the right, a cross in the center. The words embroidered beneath read: Guns, God, and Glory.

  I walked up to the counter, looking through the glass at the pistols beneath. Revolvers. Automatics from Smith & Wesson, Colt, Glock. Two dozen or more were under the glass. Behind the man, rifles were mounted on the wall.

  I hadn’t fired a gun since shooting at cans with my cousin Lucas back when we were in high school. That’d been with his Dad’s old M1911 Colt. I swallowed then said in as casual a tone as I could muster, “Looking for a pistol. A .45, I think.”

  The man nodded then opened up the back of the case and reached in. “Got a Colt model, it’s used. And a Glock 17 here, perfect condition.”

  “Let me see the Colt?” I didn’t care if it was new, long as it worked. And the Colt was more familiar.

  He lifted the pistol out of the case and set it on the counter. Its blue metal housing and the wooden pistol grips were near enough identical to Uncle Bill’s .45. I carefully picked up the weapon, removed the magazine and pulled the slide back, checking for a chambered round. Daddy taught me a million times to always assume a weapon was loaded until you verified otherwise.

  Daddy, Lucas, Uncle Bill. The purveyors of violence from my childhood. Not that Daddy abused me or anything, but after all, his profession was to dispense violence—to kill people. It was something I never forgot. That contrasted vividly with Uncle Bill, whose drunken rages rained down chaos and violence on everyone around him. I struggled sometimes with the memories of that violence, the stink of the beer on his breath, the engorged blood in his face as he attacked his wife and son. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t be like my family, and especially, I wouldn’t be like him.

  But this was different.

  The weapon felt comfortable in my hand. It even smelled right. I lifted it to the back of the store, raising it to a firing grip with my left hand gripping the pistol, my right hand supporting the left.

  “I’ll take this one.”

  The man nodded. “That’ll be four hundred. Got some paperwork to fill out,” he said.

  I started filling out the instant background check paperwork. Once completed, I slid it and my driver’s license across the counter. Then I opened my wallet and counted out four one-hundred-dollar bills and laid them on the counter.

  Twenty minutes later I was back in the car, headed to Route 7.

  Chase lived in a crappy apartment complex on Leesburg Pike not far from Bailey’s Crossroads, a mixed urban area bordering Arlington and Alexandria. That stretch of highway was lined with dirty apartments, run-down shopping centers, and partially-vacant strip malls. Perfect place for a sleazebag.

  I drove past the townhouse once, scanning for movement. I didn’t see anyone, nor did I see Chase’s car, an early 1980s Plymouth, held together with Bondo and duct tape. Once again, rage filled me that the police had let him go.

  I backed my car in across the parking lot from the townhouse, under the shade of a tree. I had no idea when, or even if, Chase was going to return. But he’d done something to Brenna, and I was going to find out what. I’d wait as long as it took.

  I slumped down into my seat. The phone rang. Damn it. I took it out—it was Teagan. I shuddered. I didn’t have time to talk with her right now. I didn’t have time to talk with her ever again. I declined the call and continued waiting.

  I tried to imagine what it must be like for cops on a stakeout. They must get exhausted. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. But then again, I’d hardly slept in days.

  The sound of a cracked muffler was unmistakable. I slumped down further into my seat. Would Chase recognize my car and just keep going? Maybe he’d run, and maybe he’d lead me all the way to Brenna.

  The Plymouth came into view as Chase turned too fast into the parking space directly across from me. Even with my door and windows closed, I could hear the music pounding out of his car, some unrecognizable rap. I reached across to the passenger seat and gripped the pistol in my right hand.

  Chase’s car door opened. I opened mine at the same time. I slipped out as quietly as I could, then bolted across the parking lot. His back to me, he reached back into the car for something.

  Without hesitation I reached out and slammed the door as hard as I could, catching his left leg below the knee. He crumpled, half in and half out of the car, and screamed, “Fuck!”

  As he tried to whip around, I kicked him hard in the balls and he screamed again. While his mouth was open, I shoved the barrel of the pistol in it, grabbing his shirt in my left hand, and holding the pistol in the right.

  He went instantly silent, his eyes growing wide. He started to speak and I shoved the pistol harder, causing him to gag. I could feel the trigger under my finger. I loosened my grip. If I killed him, he wouldn’t be able to tell me anything.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  I pulled the pistol back a little, enough to let him talk. Tears ran down his face. “I don’t know. Mr. Roberts, believe me, I don’t know where she is.”

  “You fucking tell me!” I screamed.

  He slid down slowly, his ass on the concrete, his back and head against the side of the car. I kept the gun aimed directly at his face.

  “I don’t know where she is, believe me, I don’t!” His denial was a wail. Fucking coward. His eyes were rolling around, searching for help. There wasn’t going to be any fucking help for him.

  “Tell me, you fucking child molester! Where IS SHE?” I snarled.

  “I don’t know—” he shouted back, starting to try to lift himself up, one hand pressing against the concrete, and the other lifting against the inside frame of the car door.

  “Liar!” I screamed. Pistol still in his face, I grabbed the car door with my left hand and slammed it.

  He screamed, eyes bugging, face turning red. The door didn’t close all the way. I pushed a foot against his arm, then jerked it back and slammed the door on his arm
again, crushing bones. His screams turn high-pitched now, shrieking, and tears and snot ran down his face.

  I leaned close, pushing the pistol against his temple. My vision had narrowed in; I couldn’t see anything else but Chase and my rage.

  “Where. Is. She?” I screamed.

  In my peripheral vision I saw a car screech to a stop, blue lights flashing on its roof.

  “Drop it! Police! Drop the weapon!”

  “Answer me!” I screamed.

  “I don’t know!” Chase wailed.

  I looked up. Blue lights. One police car. Two. A cop crouched behind one of the cars and shouted, “Drop the weapon!”

  I raged at the injustice. I didn’t get an answer! “Arrest him!” I cried out. “He kidnapped my daughter. He hurt her!”

  The officer behind the car shouted, “Drop. The. Weapon. Now!”

  I closed my eyes, crouched, and set the pistol down.

  Then I stood, hands in the air.

  One second later, massive hands slammed me to the ground, my face bouncing off the blacktop.

  Six

  Erin

  I stood at the window, one hand resting against the wall, and watched as the school bus carried Sam away. Cole had been at the restaurant for an hour already, and I had yet another endless day ahead of me. Would today be the day? Would I open my laptop, pick a city, look through the ads and discover my daughter? Would the police call and tell me they’d finally found her body? Would the phone ring, and it would be her on the other end?

  Brenna’s absence from our lives had left an open wound that refused to heal, a wound that was aggravated every holiday, every milestone, every day we didn’t know what had happened to her. Sometimes I hated myself, because there were days when I almost hoped she were dead. At least then we would know. I’d gone through every possible scenario in my mind, from Brenna living it up somewhere happy, to … well … the worst.

  What was the worst? All too real possibilities. Trafficked. Prostitution. Torture. Drugs. My mind could fill in all the possibilities, all the dangers, all the hideous and unimaginable (but not really unimaginable) things.

  Maybe today. My eyes dropped to my laptop. The computer sat on the scarred coffee table, waiting for me to begin yet another day … yet another day that would end with me weeping or vomiting or drinking just a little bit too much.

  Not today.

  I would search later. Today, I needed to get out of this house.

  It’s not that I hadn’t searched for work before. I had. I’d applied for jobs at Fort McClellan, at the General Dynamics plant, at the car dealerships and a hundred doctors’ offices, realtors and accountants. I’d reached out to Jim, Cole’s Dad, to see if he could connect me with someone at Fort McClellan for a job. But so far, I hadn’t had any luck. I needed to get out, stop applying for jobs over the Internet, and start walking into places. If for no other reason than to pull myself a step or two out of this despair before I drank myself to death.

  I showered, then took extra care putting on makeup and a conservative floral dress. On the way out the door I picked up the leather portfolio which contained copies of my resume. My resume, unfortunately, was sparse. My last full-time job had been with Alliance for Justice, a position I left in 1998, right before Sam was born. I had loved that job. But the economics just didn’t work … the job didn’t pay that well, and Cole’s paid a lot more. When the kids were very young, it just made sense for me to stay home with them, and when they got to be teenagers, somehow I just never went back. I had stayed involved in some things, volunteer work along with involvement at the PTA at the kids’ schools. But that was about it.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t cut it for experience in a depressed job market. Eventually something would come, but in the meantime, we were stuck living on Cole’s salary from the restaurant … which wasn’t enough.

  I drove to the mall first. Most of the businesses in the mall were just opening up for the day or still had their gates down. On top of that, at least half a dozen of the stores in the mall were vacant. The economy here, like much of the rest of the country, was hurting.

  For the next three hours, I systematically went from one store to the next, asking for applications and to talk with managers. For the people I spoke with, it was clear this was routine … a lot of people approached them every day looking for work. I didn’t get any enthusiasm at all, but I did get applications. I carried them out to the car, got in, and left to drive to the nearby Starbucks. The Waffle House was actually closer, but I really didn’t want to see Cole right now.

  I hesitated.

  Maybe it was time for a peace offering. Things had been so difficult between us for so long, I barely knew how to talk to him anymore. I felt like I didn’t even know him half the time. It wasn’t just Brenna’s disappearance or the months he’d spent in jail right after. It wasn’t even the affair, though that, more than anything else, had wrecked our marriage. We were already in bad shape long before he got involved with Teagan Campbell.

  I honestly didn’t know if I was ever going to forgive him. We went through a lot of therapy together, and I’d gone to plenty on my own. At least until Cole lost his job and our health insurance lapsed.

  Waffle House had health insurance, but it was pretty minimal … and it certainly didn’t cover therapy.

  Okay, then. I would try. Instead of turning left, to go down to the Starbucks, I turned right. Two minutes later, I arrived at the brown shoebox-shaped restaurant with its towering yellow sign. I parked in front of the restaurant and sat in my seat for a moment looking in. Cole stood at the grill, wearing a ridiculous paper hat, his hands moving as he cooked an order.

  Sometimes I forgot how big of a change he’d struggled through. Yes, I gave up my career. But he lost his against his will. And as much as he hated this job and was exhausted by it, he still got up and went to work every day. I was feeling more charitable toward him right now than I had in a long time. I grabbed my portfolio and headed inside.

  The first thing I noticed walking in was that the air-conditioning had been fixed. For the last three weeks it hadn’t been working at all, during the hottest part of the year. Cole’s boss was really awful about taking care of maintenance things, even when he knew it was going to hurt traffic at the restaurant. Cole usually tried to stay loyal to the guy, because he’d given Cole a chance despite the felony conviction. While I agreed with that, gratitude only went so far. No one was going to stay and eat in a restaurant where the temperature was over a hundred degrees, and the sales hit would take a big chunk out of Cole’s paycheck. And to be honest, Cole’s boss hadn’t had a lot of choice in giving Cole a chance—not when their senior vice president was Cole’s best friend. If your boss’s boss called you up and said, “Give this guy a chance,” are you going to say no?

  The inside of the restaurant had a vaguely 1970s decor: wood paneling, large globe lights, and orange vinyl seats. It always gave me a headache coming in this place.

  Maybe more so today than normal. Cole didn’t see me. He had his back to the front door as he was cooking. Next to him, standing a lot closer than I would like, was one of his waitresses. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties, with long brown hair. Even though the Waffle House uniforms were tacky and shapeless, she’d tied her apron tight to emphasize the curves at her waist and breasts. She was about an inch from my husband, leaning her head back and looking up at him as she talked. The smile on her face was already starting to piss me off.

  “Look, Julie, I said no.” Oh, I thought. That was Cole’s annoyed voice. He continued, “It’s a race weekend. Nobody takes off on race weekends. Not you, not me, not our division manager, not our vice president. We’re all working that weekend.”

  Especially in that polyester uniform, the girl looked like a bouncy house—which was slowly deflated. I was happy to hear his annoyed tone of voice with her. She was a little too much like Teagan for my taste.

  I slid onto a seat at the counter, just as one of the other w
aitresses called out, “Good morning!”

  Simultaneously, Cole and one of the waitresses shouted, “Good morning!”

  Well, that was rehearsed. The only one who didn’t say it was the younger waitress who had been pushing her boobs too close to my husband—she flounced off in a huff. I hoped he’d fire her.

  Cole completed the order he was working on just as one of the waitresses approached me to lay out silverware. Then he turned around, and there was no mistaking the genuine smile that passed across his face. The smile was followed by a puzzled expression.

  “Erin! Hey … I wasn’t expecting you to drop in.”

  “Would you prefer I didn’t?”

  His face clouded. “No … I’m glad you’re here. We don’t talk to each other enough anymore. What are you up to?”

  Are you checking up on me? Was that what he was asking? Who knew. This was possibly the most conversation we’d had in weeks. At least it wasn’t an argument. Yet. I held up my folio. “Job applications. I have some to fill out, and it was here or Starbucks.”

  One of the waitresses approached me. I guessed, based on the deep lines around her mouth, that she was in her late sixties. Her hair was dyed a rich auburn. “What can I get you, baby?”

  “Just coffee.”

  Cole rested his hands on the counter. “Susan, let me introduce my wife. Erin, this is Susan. Everyone calls her Mama… She’s worked here just about forever.”

  “Oh, it’s so nice to meet you, baby!” the woman said. “I was beginning to wonder if Cole was making up his family.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Susan. Do people really call you Mama?”