Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Matt
Ireread every piece of material in the case file last night. Scoured it for any detail I may have missed on my first pass. Gaping holes I could drive my rental SUV through appeared. It could be a lack of cooperation or a cover up. I’m never going to know.
Since I’m already in the area, I set up a meeting with Mrs. Lassiter. Her interview may turn her against me. I have several hard questions to ask her.
There is no less awe when I pull up to her estate. Immediately, I notice something is different since my last visit when I was here with Hutton. It’s not until I walk past the east garden entrance that I notice what that change is.
She removed the twins’ statue.
When I look the other direction, the one visible from the main house is also gone. She had mentioned that she never liked them.
But why get rid of them now?
One of her house staff answers the door and leads me through to a covered porch off the back of the manor. It still knocks me slightly off center to be here. Wealth and prestige drip from every gold-gilded edge in this place.
As I take my time during the walk through, I notice ornately framed photos of the Lassiters with the last three presidents.
Mrs. Lassiter stands to greet me once we’ve arrived in the back sunroom. She’s decked out in a creamy yellow skirt with a matching blazer, and a white silk blouse.
She has a pin on her blazer of a symbol. It looks oddly like the tattoo I’ve seen… on Peterson and the mark on the statues.
“How was your trip, Agent Scholl?” Joan crosses her ankles while demurely placing her hands on her knee.
I’d rather just abandon all the social niceties and get down to business, but I’m also on high alert. She’s going to try to control this interview.
“It was fine. I met with an old friend of yours yesterday. Katherine Bradford.” Not one bit of a reaction from Joan.
I expected her to be surprised. She doesn’t even blink.
“And how is Kathy doing?”
Not well, but it’s not my place to gossip with Mrs. Lassiter about her former friend. “The Bradfords weren’t thrilled to talk to me about the reopened case.”
“Yes, well, that wouldn’t be news to me. Kathy and I had a falling out years ago.” Joan pours some tea and asks if I’d like a cup. I decline and gather my thoughts. “Kathy wanted to blame my girls for her children’s troubles.”
She shakes her head and frowns. “It’s never easy to hear that the accountability lies squarely on them. The kids themselves, I mean, Roger and Kathy were good parents.”
“What troubles?” I unbutton my suit jacket and slide back on the settee.
“Rafferty abused drugs and his younger sister, Caroline...” Joan taps her finger on her teacup and sucks her cheeks in slightly.
“Caroline lived in her older siblings’ shadows.
That could have been part of her problem, but she was obsessed with my daughters.
Jessica made light of the whole ordeal, but she stalked them, dressed like them, inserted herself in things they were involved in. ”
“She never mentioned any of that. Did anyone ever report the behavior to the authorities?”
Caroline wasn’t mentioned at all.
Joan plays with the bangle she was wearing when we last visited. “Oh, good Lord, no. She was just a troubled girl wanting popularity. Same thing that happens to a lot of girls in their teenage years.”
“You don’t see how that type of behavior could lead to more serious… dangerous behaviors?” No one, especially Mrs. Lassiter, is that ignorant.
She raises an eyebrow at me. “Caroline Bradford didn’t cause my daughters’ disappearances. I’d put money on it.” Her certainty is almost as strange as the turn this is taking.
“Huh. Her brother then?”
“If you want to make any headway with this case, now that the FBI is reinvestigating, I should tell you… two people were shielded before. Lawrence Hutton and Michael Wells. That’s where you need to start. Not the poor Bradford family. They’ve suffered just as much as I have.”
I flip back in my notes at the names I jotted from the files. No Michael Wells anywhere in the paperwork. “Mrs. Lassiter… who in the world is Michael Wells?”
She gives a derisive snort looking uncomfortably like Hutton. “You’re already in over your head, Agent Scholl.”
“There isn’t a single mention of the name in all the paperwork that I’ve went over three times picking it apart. Not one.”
I don’t need her looking down at me or questioning my capability. Her grandson does a fine job of that whenever I’m around him, and my conscience over Camp Carroll tears into me every day.
“You don’t keep up with current events, either?” She’s abandoned playing nice and this is a much more formidable Joan Lassiter.
“I’ll be doing extensive research later. Give me something here. Who is he?” I get poised to take notes and almost drop my pen.
“John’s stepson. He was married before, it didn’t last long, a couple of years. She was a single mother and had an eight-year-old.”
“He adopted him?” My hand is getting sweaty; I rub it against my suit pants. I wish I hadn’t declined the damn tea now, something to do with my hands.
“Absolutely not. Michael had a father; he just never saw him. He latched onto John. Called him dad, would spend weekends with us, and he had a very unnatural interest in my girls.”
Fucking hell, this is one big mess.
How is his name not in bold print all over the place?
“How would I know who he is by current events?”
“He’s going after John’s money. He is claiming that he’s the heir of his fortune.” She smiles like she’s won some grand award. “But he never counted on a blood relative appearing, did he?”
“Hutton you mean?” Of course, she does.
Money does make some people commit murder. My blood runs cold. Wells just became my number one suspect.
“Let’s back up here. You said that he had an ‘unnatural’ connection to the girls?”
“Michael was ten when they were born. He never considered them sisters. He showed little interest in them until they… developed. Then he said and did inappropriate things constantly.”
Mrs. Lassiter’s usually settled countenance shifts to one of disgust. “I told the girls to keep a distance from him. John never saw the things I did, he knew how odd Michael was, but he didn’t want to think of him as a pedophile.
” She grips her arm, shaking her head. “I know you should never say this about a child, but I couldn’t stand him from the moment I met him. ”
“Why would there be no mention or record of him in the original investigation? Any ideas?”
“Oh, Agent Scholl, buckle up, reopening this case is going to be career suicide if you try and go after Michael. His father is a New York Senator, and you may know his mother… it’s rumored she’s climbed the ranks of the FBI.”
I would have spat the tea out if I’d been drinking any. A pit opens in my stomach as pieces start to fall into place.
I set down the notepad and wipe my hands down my pants.
“What’s his mom’s name?” Although, I know before she even responds. Hutton’s instincts to keep his mouth closed were right. I have to get him out of his protection detail.
I’m half in a daze as Mrs. Lassiter walks me out. “Why did you take the statues down?”
“They were hideous, morbid, and a reminder of the failure I was as a mother. I didn’t protect my girls the way I should have.”