Chapter 32
Laurel, Mississippi
“Addy.” Wyatt hated to wake her. She’d struggled to be so strong the last few hours. She was totally exhausted, physically and emotionally.
She roused, straightened. “Where are we?”
“Laurel city limits.” Sheriff Henley had agreed to meet them at her office. Henley didn’t do any explaining on the phone, but her tone had spoken volumes about the situation. Not good. Something big had already gone down here in Laurel and it was no doubt connected to this investigation.
“Man, I need coffee.” Addy pulled her hair free of the ponytail and finger-combed it before putting it right back into the twisty rubber holder.
The ponytail was part of her standard operating procedure. The hair went back before her weapon slid into her holster after she dressed each morning.
If this night hadn’t been so screwed up, he might have been able to work up the initiative to smile just thinking about all her little habits. “Coffee it is.” He put finding an open drive-through on his mental radar.
That Adeline lapsed immediately into silence told him that waking had summoned the events of the previous ten or twelve hours. Life altering. Emotion shattering. Damn, this was hard on her.
“I should check on my mom.”
“I called about half an hour ago,” he said, slowing her fingers on the keypad of her cell. “She’s still resting. Her vitals are stable.”
Addy put her cell away. “Thanks.”
The streetlights allowed him to see the dark circles under her eyes. The resigned set of her lips bothered him the most. She was dealing with the issues as best she could with a missing persons’ investigation and a threat to her own safety on her plate.
Not just persons—her sisters.
The reality of what Addy had learned tonight blew him away all over again. How had Carl and Irene kept this kind of secret? He’d sure as hell never heard anything about Addy being adopted. A sign up ahead drew his attention from the troubling musings.
“Here we go.” He pushed the blinker stem and prepared to make a right into the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through. He ordered two large coffees and proceeded to the pickup window. He paid up and passed her the first cup.
“Thank God.” Addy cradled the cup in both hands and inhaled its fragrant aroma.
Wyatt set his in the cup holder. As he rolled back out onto the street, Addy carefully removed the lid and blew until she dared to take a sip. She expressed more of those appreciative sounds. That made him smile.
A few blocks later he parked in the lot at the Jones County Sheriff’s Department and shut off the engine. “You ready?” He picked up his cup, took a much-needed swallow.
Adeline turned to him. “I’ve tried and tried to recall a moment when I should have known.
” She shook her head. “But there isn’t one.
The family photo albums have pictures of me going all the way back to infancy.
” She shrugged. “I mean, I looked like an infant. Maybe I was already six months old,” she amended.
“The only oddities were my blue eyes and blond hair and the fact that most of my baby pictures were of me alone. No photos of one or the other of my parents holding me while I was really small.”
She shrugged, the movement screaming of just how tired she was.
“No one in the family, none of our friends, ever had a slip of the tongue. How could none of them have known? Or been so careful that it never came up accidentally? I guess that’s what makes the whole situation so unbelievable.
It’s too clean . . . too perfectly executed.
You see this shit in the movies, but this is real. ”
Wyatt wished Irene had come forward and privately given him the information about the Prescott woman.
He wasn’t entirely sure it would have made any difference, but it would have provided another angle to investigate.
Then he could have prepared Addy for this.
On some level he understood why Irene hadn’t.
His gaze lingered on Addy. There were some things a person just didn’t want to lose.
Get your head on straight, Wyatt.
“I suppose,” he offered, “we’ll understand how this all happened eventually.”
“I suppose.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Sheriff Henley’s waiting for us.” She reached for her door.
Wyatt did the same. He hopped out of his SUV and started around it.
At the rear bumper he stalled. From the moment Addy had come home, he’d been entirely focused on her and this investigation.
He’d let everything else slide. Hadn’t paid any attention to the routine things like the fact that his SUV needed a good wash.
He’d promised himself he wouldn’t let this happen. And look at him, he’d spent scarcely three days in her presence and already she’d become the center of his universe. He considered the grime veiling his vehicle and shook his head. This was going to be like nine years ago all over—
The thought derailed as his gaze zeroed in on the rear windshield. “What the hell is this?” The well-lit parking lot allowed him to read the words scrawled across the skim of road grunge.
“Oh. Yeah.” Addy wandered back to where he stood. “I forgot to tell you about that.”
If Henley hadn’t been waiting for their arrival, Wyatt felt confident he would have raked Addy over the coals right there in the parking lot when she told him about the incident at the cemetery. But Henley was waiting and Addy had been through enough for one day.
He didn’t even bother rubbing in the fact that he’d warned her that going anywhere alone wasn’t a good idea.
She knew.
Instead, he settled a hand at the small of her back and guided her to the front entrance. Fear of what could have happened ripped at his insides. It was a flat-out miracle she was here with him right now instead of out there somewhere with this psycho.
Sheriff Vicki Henley waited for them in the small lobby. “Come on in.” She looked almost as weary as Wyatt felt. “I see you already have coffee, so let’s go to my office and I’ll bring you up to speed.”
Henley was a petite woman but her bearing was strong and confident; she looked to be about fifty.
He doubted there was a deputy in her department, female or male, who didn’t walk the line for this by-the-book lady.
Though Wyatt had never had the pleasure of coordinating an investigation with her, he knew her reputation.
When he and Addy had taken seats in front of Henley’s desk, she launched right into the briefing. “I don’t know how much you already know about Daniel Jamison, but whatever you’ve heard, everything has changed. We have a situation.”
Wyatt had a feeling they should have checked the state database or at least googled the man before coming. But Henley had insisted he come to her office ASAP. Three hours of hard driving had gotten them here. And it sounded very much like things were about to get exponentially more complicated.
Just what they needed.
“At this point,” Wyatt explained, “we know nothing at all about Jamison. I made the call to you and we drove straight here.”
Henley nodded. “It’s all bad. One of my deputies is dead and a nurse at Forrest General was also killed by this man earlier today.”
“Does Jamison have a history of violence?” This question came from Addy.
“No. That’s the weird part.” Henley opened a folder on her desk. “Ten days ago we received a domestic disturbance call through the 911 dispatch for the Jamison residence. The place is off Highway 29, basically in the middle of nowhere. The address was wrong in the system.
“My two deputies had a hell of a time finding it. They showed up at the residence forty-five minutes after the initial call. Apparently Jamison either saw the vehicles turn into his drive or figured out his wife had made the call. He was nowhere to be found, but he hadn’t been gone long.”
“The wife?” Addy inquired, her voice somber.
“Nearly dead.” Henley shook her head. “During the struggle he rammed her head through a set of French doors. There was bruising on her throat. We figure he thought he’d killed her.
For whatever reason he just didn’t choke her long enough.
” The lady sheriff shrugged. “Or maybe he just didn’t care.
He’d intended for her to be dead in the end.
The bastard had been in the process of burying her in the basement when my men arrived on the scene and he cut and ran. ”
Wyatt kept a watch on Addy from the corner of his eye. This horror just kept piling up. “But she’s alive?”
“She’s hanging on.” Henley stared at the file on her desk. “We believe he’d been planning to kill her for several days. The floor of the basement is rock. He’d removed enough to prepare a grave. My guess is he intended to bury her, then replace the rocks and suggest that she had gone missing.”
“Anyone else in the family have any ideas on the reason he did this?” Addy rubbed at her forehead as if a headache had begun there.
“The wife’s mother and father have never cared too much for Jamison,” Henley related.
“But he’d eventually grown on them. He’d been married to their daughter for ten years.
Good job with the postal service. No financial troubles.
No marital problems that anyone was aware of.
The couple has a son, Danny. He’s with his grandparents. ”
“The boy was unharmed?” Wyatt hoped like hell that was the case.
Henley nodded. “My deputies found him hiding in the closet under the stairs. According to his grandparents he’s smart as a whip. Has been reading since he was four years old. An exceptionally bright student. But if he saw or heard anything, he isn’t talking.”
Addy’s gaze collided with Wyatt’s. This story just continued to get worse.
“Lydia, the wife,” Henley went on, “had advised her mother that there was some tension related to her pregnancy. She was terrified of telling her husband that she’d learned the baby was a girl.”
“She’s pregnant.” Addy’s face paled.