Chapter Fifteen
“I was taking a picture of some flowers—some fireweed. I crouched down to try a close-up shot and something hit me in the head. I fell over. I tried to fight, to call for help, but a man came up and hit me again—just punched me right in the face.” Debra put a hand to her bruised face.
She was sitting up in a hospital bed, an IV trailing from one arm, the other arm in a cast, monitor lines trailing from her chest. She had a black eye, broken ribs, a mild concussion and her legs were scraped raw from where her assailant had dragged her over the rocks.
“What did the man look like?” Gage asked. He stood beside the hospital bed. Ryker sat in the only chair, taking notes on the interview.
Debra frowned. “It all happened so fast. But he was an older guy—maybe in his fifties. Not too tall—kind of stocky. Gray hair. And a mustache. He had a mustache, I’m sure.”
Gage nodded. So far, this fit the description they had of William Ledger. Though the same description might apply to many other men. “What happened next?” he asked.
“A woman came running up. She looked . . .familiar. But I can’t remember where I’d seen her before.”
“What did she look like?” Gage asked.
“She had short, red hair. And she was little. At first I thought she was a girl.”
“By little, do you mean short?” Ryker asked.
“Just . . .petite. Not very tall, but also not very big all over.”
“What did the woman do?” Gage asked.
“She told the man they had to hurry. He ordered her to help him and she grabbed my arm and they started dragging me across the ground. I tried to fight, but the man hit me again and I think I passed out for a little bit. It hurt so bad.” She paused. “Could I have some water, please?”
Gage passed her a cup with a straw and she sipped, then returned it to him.
“I think they threw me off the ridge,” she said.
“I just remember pain—in my arm and my head and everywhere. The next thing I really remember was waking up here.” She looked around the hospital room, with its blue-green walls and a single window with a view of distant mountains.
“Roxanne Byrne was with you, wasn’t she?” asked Gage.
She turned her attention back to him. “She was. But I think by then she had started back toward the Jeep. I told her I wanted to take a few more pictures before I went back.”
“Do you remember if Roxanne was nearby when you were attacked?” Gage asked.
“No. I don’t think she was there. She had gone back. Why are you asking about Roxanne?” She searched their faces. “Has something happened? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Roxanne is missing,” Gage said. “She never made it back to the Jeep.”
Debra’s eyes filled with tears. “That can’t be,” she said. “I saw her walking toward the road.”
Her distress seemed genuine, but Gage had met good actors before. “Do you know a woman named Alice?” he asked.
“Alice?” She stared at him. “Do you mean the other girl William Ledger kidnapped?”
“Do you know her?” Gage asked.
“I’ve read about her. I’ve never met her.
I asked Roxanne about her and she said she didn’t know what happened to Alice.
I tried to find her before I started looking for Roxanne.
I didn’t really know what I was doing back then.
There was no trace of her online that I could find, so I moved on to looking for Roxanne and got luckier.
I never went back to do more research on Alice, though I always meant to. ”
“What about Betty Josephs?” Gage asked.
“That’s the woman who was visiting Ledger in prison. I told Roxanne about her.”
“But you aren’t her?” Gage asked.
“What are you talking about?” She clutched at the covers. “My name is Debra Percy.”
“Has it always been Debra Percy?”
“Yes. If you don’t believe me, ask my mother.”
“And you never met William Ledger.”
“No.”
“You didn’t work with him to lure Roxanne away from safety so that he could kidnap her?”
“No!” Her voice rose. “What kind of a person do you think I am? That’s horrible.”
“I have to ask these things,” Gage said.
“Is that what you think happened to Roxanne—that William Ledger kidnapped her?” She leaned toward him. “Is Ledger the person who attacked me? Who was the woman? Do you think it was Betty?”
“We don’t know much of anything at this point,” Gage said.
“I can’t believe I was so close to Ledger and missed the chance to talk to him,” she said, her words almost a wail. “I could have asked him about Bettina. Maybe I could have caught him off guard and he would have told the truth.”
A nurse pushed open the door and glared at the deputies. “Is everything all right in here?” she asked.
Debra was sobbing, head bent, tears falling onto the sheets. The nurse hurried over to her and put an arm around her.
“We’ll go now,” Gage said. “Debra, if you think of anything at all that might be helpful, give us a call.”
Debra said nothing, continuing to sob.
Gage and Ryker didn’t speak until they emerged from the hospital building. “Do you think she was telling the truth?” Ryker asked. “About not knowing Ledger?”
“She was pretty convincing. And we haven’t talked to her mother, but we dug pretty deep into her past and it checks out.
There is a Debra Percy from San Antonio who had an older sister, Bettina, who disappeared when Debra was ten.
If the person in that hospital bed assumed her identity, she covered her tracks really well.
” He shook his head. “We’ve asked the state to do a search for Alice but they haven’t gotten back to us with anything yet. ”
Ryker checked his watch. “It’s four o’clock.”
“You were supposed to be off shift an hour ago,” Gage said.
“We’re in the middle of an active search for a missing woman,” Ryker said. “Not to mention, Sarah Michaelson is still missing, and there’s a possible sexual predator on the loose. No one’s paying much attention to the schedule right now.”
“The sheriff is trying to get some help from the state on these searches,” Gage said. “Meanwhile, I need you to stay here with Debra. I’ll send someone out to relieve you as soon as I have a deputy available.”
“Do you think her attacker will try to finish her off?” Ryker asked.
“I don’t know. But I don’t want to take that chance.”
Carter had taken Dalton straight to their parents’ house, where his mother had declared he would stay in his old bedroom for the time being.
He spent a miserable night and woke the next morning to find that Carter was still there.
“I’m temporarily moving back into my old room, too,” Carter said at breakfast. “Mom and Dad thought it would be a good idea.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” he protested.
He said it again when they were back in his room, after Carter suggested they distract themselves with gaming.
“You’d be a really ugly baby,” Carter said.
“Just leave me alone.” Dalton sank into the beanbag chair in the corner of the room. How many hours had he spent here as a teen, playing video games or hunched over a laptop, learning to code and create his own programs? “I promise I’m not going to flip out or anything.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Carter sat in the ladder-backed wooden chair that went with the student desk where both boys had done homework for years.
“I should be out there looking for her,” Dalton said.
“But you can’t be, so what are you going to do instead?”
Dalton wanted to shout at his brother to leave him alone. But being alone meant having no one to distract him from the worst-case scenarios that insisted on playing out in his head. Roxanne hurt. Roxanne tied up. Roxanne dead.
He leaned forward and picked up the laptop he had insisted on retrieving from his apartment before they came to his parents’ house. “I’m going to try again to find out something about Alice,” he said.
“You think Debra is Alice?” Carter asked. Dalton had briefly explained his theories on the drive home yesterday, though he hadn’t believed Carter was really listening.
“It makes sense. She came on the same tour as Roxanne and lured her away from the group, so that Ledger could attack her.”
“But she made that tour reservation weeks ago,” Carter said. “She had no idea Roxanne would be on the same tour.”
“Maybe she planned to persuade her to come on the trip, and I saved her the trouble by inviting Roxanne myself,” Dalton said. The knowledge that he was the one who was responsible for Roxanne being on the mountain that day ate at him.
“How are you going to find out the truth?” Carter asked.
Dalton opened the laptop. “I’ve been starting with Debra and going backwards—and getting nowhere. What if I start with Alice and try to trace her life and see where she ended up.”
“How are you going to do that if you don’t even know if Alice was her real name?” Carter asked. “And you don’t have a last name.”
“There are court documents somewhere that will have her real name,” Dalton said. “If I can find those, I’ll know her name and can start from there.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Carter asked.
“Leave me alone. Go home to Mira.”
“Mira is the one who sent me here. She said I had to help my brother. And she’s right.” He crossed his arms. “So you’re stuck with me.”
“Just get out of my hair.”
He was dimly aware of Carter leaving the room.
All his attention was focused on a search for the court transcripts from William Ledger’s original trial.
The website for the court was no help, so he went back to the newspaper coverage of the trial.
He was able to read dozens of articles, all of which referred to Ledger’s captives as “Mary” and “Alice.”
Many of the stories were written by a reporter named Andi Wentworth, with the San Antonio Star.
Dalton pulled up a current issue of the paper and searched.
He sat up straighter when he spotted Wentworth’s byline, then found the number for the newsroom.
Moments later, he was speaking to a woman with a broad Texas drawl who identified herself as Andi Wentworth.
Dalton introduced himself as a friend of Roxanne Byrne’s. “You probably know her better as ‘Mary,’” he said. “The girl responsible for William Ledger’s arrest.”
“I remember her,” Andi said. “Such a brave little girl.”
“I’m calling you because we’re trying to find Alice,” he said.
“Why are you looking for Alice?”
“You know that Ledger is out of prison now?”
“Yes. I wrote a piece for the paper when he was released.”
“Roxanne has had a couple of unsettling encounters with someone we believe is William Ledger. Threatening encounters.” He took a big breath, prepared to spill everything, if it would persuade this reporter to help him.
“Roxanne is missing now. I’m afraid William Ledger may have kidnapped her again. ”
“Wait? What? Say that again. I need to write this down.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” he said. “But I want something from you.”
“What do you want?” she asked.
“You covered Ledger’s original trial,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Did you know Alice’s real name?”
“That name was never released to the public.”
“Yet you recognized Roxanne’s name. You knew she was Mary.”
“The first name. She had a different last name.”
“I need to know Alice’s name.”
“Why?”
“Because when William Ledger was in prison, he had a woman named Betty Josephs visiting him. That’s not her real name. As far as I can tell, she didn’t even exist until 2022. I think Betty was really Alice. I believe Ledger got in touch with her somehow and she’s helping him.”
“Why would she help him?” Andi asked. “He . . .he tortured those girls.”
“She was with him for several years before he kidnapped Roxanne,” Dalton said. “I don’t know much about psychology, but I can see how that would warp someone. And she lured Roxanne to Ledger’s house originally.”
“Okay, so you think he got to her again, she changed her name to Betty and started helping him again.” He heard the rapid click of a keyboard in the background and pictured her typing furiously. “And she somehow ended up where you are now? Where is that?”
“I’m not saying until you tell me if you can help me.”
“Give me a minute, okay? I’m going to put you on hold.”
An instrumental version of a song that had been popular when his parents were teenagers played over the phone as Dalton waited. A few minutes later Andi was back on the line. “Your story about Roxanne Byrne missing checks out. In a town called Eagle Mountain, Colorado.”
So much for thinking he could keep the information from her. “Do you know Alice’s real name?” he asked.
“Brianna Davidson,” Andi said. “She had been in the foster system less than a year when Ledger kidnapped her. Her mother was jailed for drug possession. She died of an overdose shortly after being released. Her father had deserted the family the year before and was killed in a shooting the same month Brianna disappeared.”
“Rough life,” Dalton said.
“It sounds wild, but Ledger gave her a kind of stability she hadn’t had before,” Andi said. “Still a truly awful life, but I can see how it would twist something in a vulnerable child.”
“Do you know what happened to her after Ledger was convicted?” Dalton asked.
“She was thirteen by then. As far as I know, she was still in the foster system, like Roxanne. I didn’t keep track of either one of them. I’m sorry I don’t have anything else for you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “This gives me a place to start, at least.”
“Now you need to tell me what’s going on there in Eagle Mountain.”
For the next fifteen minutes, he told her about Roxanne’s arrival in the town, the man in a truck who had run her off the road, the break-in of her home and her disappearance the day before.
He told the story quickly and dispassionately, betraying nothing until he told about searching for her and finding her gone.
“What is your relationship to Roxanne?” Andi asked.
“We’re . . .friends,” he said. “Good friends.”
“I hope they find her soon,” Andi said. “And I hope she’s all right.”
“I hope so, too.”
He hung up the phone and spent a few minutes pulling himself out of the dark place that talking about Roxanne and Ledger had sent him. Andi’s words “he tortured those girls” shook him, but he forced them away. He had work to do. He had to find Alice—Brianna Davidson.