30
“I want to speak to Rowan. Only Rowan for now.”
In the ten minutes they’d been gone, Sophia had made a decision. The detectives looked at Rowan in surprise. They’d bought four cups of coffee in the hospital cafeteria and worked out their questions for Sophia.
As they’d stood in line to pay, Noelle had stated that she and Maxine would ask all the interview questions.
“Interview?” Rowan had asked, not liking the term. “Sophia’s been through a brutal ordeal and just found out her father is dead. She needs support and to get her story out.”
“Do you want to find Evan?” Noelle stared her down.
“Don’t ask me a question like that,” snapped Rowan, hurt. “You know I do. But clearly Sophia knows nothing about where he is. She didn’t react at all when I said his name.”
“That’s also why Maxine and I will ask the questions from here on out,” said Noelle pointedly. “You nearly crossed a line—I take that back. You did cross a line by deliberately throwing Evan’s name into a question. You shouldn’t even be in the room, let alone talking to her. I’ll let you stay, but you need to be quiet. I agree with you that Sophia doesn’t know where Evan is, but we’re all pretty certain that it’s the same men behind all of this—Rod, Sophia, Evan, and Zack. Our priority is to figure out where she’s been.” She held Rowan’s gaze. “That will help us find Evan.”
Before it’s too late.
Rowan had reluctantly agreed to be quiet. Noelle had every right to send her home; Rowan was relieved the detectives hadn’t shut her out.
But now Sophia had flipped the script.
Back in her hospital room, when Rowan had handed her a cup of coffee, the woman had made her announcement.
The room went quiet.
“But—” began Noelle.
“No buts,” said Sophia. “I want to be alone with Rowan. For now.” While they got coffee, the woman seemed to have gained more mental clarity and physical strength. Her eyes were sharp and her hand steady as she accepted the coffee.
“For now,” firmly repeated Noelle. She and Maxine left the room without a look at Rowan.
“Sheesh.” Sophia pointed at the chair where Maxine had originally sat. “I think the temperature dropped ten degrees in here.”
Rowan took a seat. “They’re the investigators. It’s urgent that they figure out where you’ve been and find those men.” She collected her thoughts. Once Noelle had told her she wasn’t to ask any more questions, she’d tuned them out as they made their plan in the cafeteria. “First of all, why me?”
“Because you’re not law enforcement,” said Sophia. “Yes, you have a connection, but it’s a connection to Evan, who my dad and I trust.”
“Didn’t sound like you trusted him,” said Rowan.
“What you said about him suspecting something was going on in the department made up my mind. My dad was convinced that someone there was doing something they shouldn’t.”
“Be more specific.”
Sophia sighed and looked toward the window, suddenly appearing exhausted again. “Dad found something that indicated evidence had been changed in one of his old cases. He didn’t tell me which case, but the more he poked around, the more he feared that someone would retaliate. He feared that someone didn’t want the truth to come to light and would stop at nothing to stop him. And that someone worked in law enforcement.”
Sophia took a sip of her coffee and then set it on the nearby tray table.
“My dad had become very paranoid. He brought me several burner phones and told me to stop calling him from my cell and to only use a burner. He wanted me to hide them in different places in my home, at work, and in my car.”
“That seems extreme.” Rowan was alarmed.
But Rod was brutally murdered ... so maybe not extreme.
“I thought so too. My dad talked about several cases, wondering if the outcomes weren’t what they should have been. He talked a lot about justice being served, and that he needed to correct it, so I think he started poking around in these other ones too. Anyway, he cautioned me to keep my doors and windows locked—which I’d always done anyway. Daughter of a cop, you know. He started to follow me home after work, insisting on clearing the house before I went in.”
“I take back when I said the multiple burner phones were extreme,” said Rowan. “ That behavior is extreme—except it appears his paranoia was justified. Why didn’t you have a security system?”
“We were getting to it. He’d ordered some specific system that hadn’t arrived yet.”
“What about all the blood in your house?” Rowan asked quietly.
Sophia closed her eyes and leaned back into the pillow. “My dad spent the night on Thursday.” She seemed to struggle to get the words out. “Said he didn’t want to be in his house alone and didn’t want me alone either. He’d talked about me and Zack moving in with him, but I’d put my foot down. I needed my independence, and I’d just bought that house. I didn’t want to live with my father—even though I loved him dearly.
“On Thursday I woke up in the middle of the night to his shouts. I could hear a struggle going on. I opened my bedroom door and heard him fighting with someone in the living room and shouting for me to leave. Thankfully Zack was at a friend’s. I ran to the garage, where I had spare keys, and then went out the side garage door. My car was in the driveway next to his truck. My garage was still too full of boxes of moving stuff to be used yet. I got in and left.”
“You just left.” Rowan was stunned.
“I know it sounds awful, but it was what he’d drilled in me to do. Especially in the weeks before that. Over and over. He’d ordered me to leave my cell phone behind if something ever happened. Claimed the burners were untraceable.” Sophia studied the ceiling. “Part of me thought he was going nuts. But a larger part of me knew to listen.”
“Noelle and Maxine should hear this,” said Rowan. Guilt was growing in her that the detectives had been pushed out. What Sophia had said was crucial to their investigation.
Sophia picked at her blanket. “Maybe.”
“Where did you go after you left that night?”
“Tara’s.”
Rowan was silent a long moment, realizing Sophia didn’t know her friend had been murdered. She struggled to stay silent, knowing that news should come from the detectives. “Not a motel?” she blurted, her brain at war with her guilt.
“My dad had said I was to go to a hotel—he wouldn’t let me tell him which one I would choose. But now I understand he didn’t want to reveal the name under force.”
Rowan wondered if he had been interrogated for the hotel name while being tortured.
“I panicked,” continued Sophia. “I went to Tara’s home, and she took me to a motel. I was freaking out. He’d warned me not to go pick up Zack, so that no one would follow me to him.” She turned wide eyes to Rowan. “Did he think someone would hurt Zack’s friends? Or that they’d get Zack to use against me?”
“Possibly either one,” said Rowan. Rod had clearly thought through every possibility. “Wait a second. Did he warn you about Zack that night? Did he know something was going to happen on Thursday?”
Sophia rubbed her eyes. “He’d mentioned Zack that evening since he wasn’t with us, but I don’t think he knew that would be the night. He often reviewed stuff like that with me. His warnings depended on where we were and what we were doing. Even if we were in a restaurant, he’d ask me to spot the exits.”
“He’s always been like that?”
She considered. “It’d gotten worse recently. I wasn’t sure whether to attribute it to this case he was studying or perhaps a retired-cop-with-too-much-time-to-think type of thing.”
“Which case was it?” Rowan wondered if she should ask Sophia about the copies of cases in Rod’s office.
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t be specific. I do know that it was one he worked with Evan because he kept wondering out loud if he should discuss it with Evan. I think he wanted more evidence before he took that step.”
Rowan knew Evan hadn’t worked on any of the cases found in Rod’s filing cabinets.
It must be one of the missing cases.
“What happened after Tara took you to a motel?”
“She stayed the night with me. We sat up all night and talked about what to do.”
Rowan wondered if Tara wouldn’t have been murdered if she’d told Evan and Noelle the truth instead of lying that she hadn’t heard from Sophia when they asked her.
“The next day—Friday—I got a text on one of the burners. It said that I had to drop off ten thousand dollars, otherwise they’d kill my father. They used his burner phone to contact mine.”
“I really think the detectives should hear this, Sophia. I’m positive they’re not part of whatever scheme your father was worried about.” The truth weighed heavy on Rowan. She didn’t know how long she could talk to Sophia without blurting out what had happened to Evan, Tara, and Zack.
“In a minute. I’m still thinking through what happened.” Sophia frowned. “I don’t want to make things worse.”
Rowan resigned herself to waiting a bit longer. “The detectives watched video of you withdrawing the money at the bank. But you’d left your purse behind Thursday night. How did you do that without a driver’s license?”
“I have a couple copies of my license.” She shrugged. “My father suggested it. You just tell the DMV you lost yours.”
So much caution from her father.
“Where did they want you to take the money?”
“They wanted me to drop it off at midnight Friday in a park.”
A thought occurred to Rowan. “I took Thor to your home to search for you on Saturday. He followed your scent to a construction area behind your house and then lost it. The police thought the abductors had taken you there and then got in a vehicle.”
“Tara drove me back to my house Friday night and dropped me off near that construction site so I could sneak back safely,” said Sophia. “I had to see what had happened inside my home ... part of me wondered if I’d find my father there.” She looked away. “I was shocked at the amount of blood. And the bathroom door had been bashed in. He must have fought so hard.” Tears ran down both cheeks.
Rowan took her hand. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“But I was relieved that his body wasn’t there. That meant there was a chance he was alive, and that confirmed my decision to drop off the money.” Deep breath. “Then Tara drove me to the park. When I was stashing the bag of money near a bench, I heard someone behind me. I’m not sure what happened, but I think they hit me on the head.” She gently touched the right side of her head. “I woke up in a horrible place with my head killing me.”
“The money was a ploy to capture you,” said Rowan. “Ten K is a cheap ransom these days.”
“That occurred to me later,” she said grimly.
“What I don’t understand is why they grabbed you,” said Rowan, thinking through the story Sophia had just told. “Did they believe your father had shared his concerns about that case with you? I’m assuming this is all about someone trying to cover up that some case evidence had been altered.”
Sophia closed her eyes and didn’t speak for a long time, making Rowan wonder if she’d fallen asleep. Her last few sentences had been slightly slurred. Possibly a fresh wave of side effects from the pain medication. “They wanted to know what my dad had told me about what he found.” She flinched, jerking her head as if avoiding a punch.
Should I stop?
Rowan worried she was making things worse. She didn’t know how to question someone. She wanted information, but she didn’t want to harm Sophia mentally any more than the woman already had been.
“But that was only part of it,” Sophia said quietly. “They wanted to know where I’d hidden some evidence. They beat me and beat me for that information. Threatened to kill Zack.” Her eyes opened and reflected her pain. “I told them I never had any evidence or was told where my dad hid it, and they didn’t believe me.” Sophia flinched again and then gently touched her split lip.
Is she lying?
They threatened her son. She wouldn’t lie to them.
“I’m so glad Zack is safe,” she mumbled. “I need to see him.”
Oh shit. Someone has got to tell her.
Sophia closed her eyes and turned her head away from Rowan. “It’s hard to keep my eyes open. I’ll rest for a bit and then talk to the detectives.”
Guilt weighing heavy, Rowan squeezed her hand. “There’s no rush.”
Now I’m lying.
Evan and Zack can’t wait.