Twenty-Nine Detective Olivia Newhouse #2
I now recognize that approximately one week ago, just before Walt and I landed the Fanning case, my subconscious started trying to recreate those awful memories in an effort to prompt me to protect myself.
I had no idea I was being watched by pure evil.
But my most basic instincts sensed that danger hovered close by.
Fanning was watching me. I saw him more than once, but he had disguised himself, and the recognition didn’t click in my consciousness, only in my subconscious.
The human mind is a very complex thing. It hides the details that one cannot bear to face.
Denial is one of the strongest human emotions that exists.
Considering my brain had been programmed to avoid any aspects of the past, the denial was even more powerful.
I saw what I wanted to see and ignored all the rest.
But those deeply entrenched survival instincts from my early childhood combined with the enhanced protective hormones of pregnancy ultimately proved stronger than my denial.
They kicked in, and the child I once was emerged.
All those times in the past week that I crashed into the blackness of an intense migraine, went utterly unconscious into what felt like a black hole, the child I used to be resurfaced .
. . did what had to be done. Even in my dreams, sometimes the memories seeped through.
But each time I awoke, the carefully programmed adult me took over and the deeply ingrained denial did the rest.
Then, a few days ago during the aura—those awful minutes before a debilitating migraine kicks in—some of the memories came crashing back in spurts of ugly images and awful words, and this time a few of them lingered.
The denial was fighting a losing battle.
This very minute, more memories are filtering through the carefully constructed membrane of protection the only real father I have ever known helped to put in place in my damaged mind.
I assume these recalls are of actual events, but I can’t be certain. So much is still unclear.
Had all the elements of this perfect storm not occurred, I might still have no idea about my real past.
Even now, all that I know for certain is that I cannot remember my real name—the one given to me at birth—but I am the child Carl Fanning raped and abused for eight long years. I am the “it” whose universe was filled only by him and what he wanted.
Now all I have to do is find that son of a bitch and make sure he never does that to anyone else.
First, I need to check that in my sleep last night I didn’t move the bones. They are evidence now. Everything on this farm is evidence. The files, the videos. All of it.
As I pass my mother’s potting shed, I pause. I spot something blue but only a glimpse. Moving cautiously, I ease around the corner and stop stone-still in my tracks. A blue Ford pickup—an older one—is parked behind the shed.
“What the hell . . . ?”
I move closer, open the passenger side door, and look in the glove box. The registration shows the truck belongs to Janie Hyatt’s riding academy. What the hell is it doing here?
I think of the cabin Walt and I visited and the barn that was burned.
Fanning’s neighbor stated that two women matching Hyatt’s and Reeves’s descriptions drove past Fanning’s rented house.
I consider how, according to both Patricia Shelby and Melanie Hardeman, the victims banded together to plan his demise.
But why would they bring him here? They couldn’t have known my secret. Even I didn’t know it.
But Mario Sanchez did.
The reality hits me like a punch to the chest. He is the skinny kid I helped escape. He may know who I am . . . God knows Walt and I have been on television enough.
I was in the shed yesterday. Fanning is not in there. That leaves only the barn. I head in that direction. I think of all the times I have traveled this path with my mother or father. Some of the memories, of course, are not real, but they feel real.
I open the barn door and step inside. Even after all these years, it still smells of hay and horses.
My heart quickens. I’ve had flashes of memories about him being chained, and after discovering the bones I dug up, more snippets of memory seeped into my head.
Images of me—the other me, the one I didn’t remember—torturing him. I shudder.
I find the switch for the lights, flip it, and then move deeper into the enormous structure. The tack room is on the right. My mother’s trophies and ribbons as well as those of the child who’s buried in the woods are neck deep in that room. All the horse gear was sold along with the horses.
At the end of the row, in the very last stall, I find him.
A length of chain has been looped to the ring on the wall meant for a horse’s lead rope.
He is handcuffed to the chain. The smell of feces and urine and death fill my lungs.
My first impulse is to see if he’s still alive, but I resist. I will not go near him. I hope he’s dead.
Whispers of words, flickers of images, sift through my mind.
Finding the note he left on the windshield of my car while I was in the house going through my father’s papers late Sunday evening.
I’m waiting in the barn. Me walking toward the barn, agony spearing through my brain with every step I made.
I haven’t tended his wound, that’s obvious, but I haven’t killed him, either.
Perhaps my dedication to the oath I took prevented me from crossing that line.
The eerie calmness I feel surprises me. I’m not sure what I should be feeling, but I’m certain this is not it. As an officer of the law, it’s my duty to serve and protect, yet I cannot bring myself to do either for him.
His eyes open and the corners of his split lips lift upward. “I didn’t think you were coming back this time.”
“How did you get here?” The words are mine, but it’s as if someone else prodded me to ask the question. I am oddly numb. Shaking inside where he can’t see.
I steel my spine and force my brain to shift into cop mode.
I might not know the name I was given at birth, but I am still a cop.
Although I can’t be sure exactly what’s happened here, I have an idea.
On the floor between us is a balled-up piece of paper—his note.
I should pick it up; it’s evidence. But that would mean moving closer to him.
I don’t want to be close to him. I want to run .
. . to hide. The images and sounds of all the things he did to me erupt in my brain, and the anguish nearly doubles me over.
He laughs, the sound dry and rotten as if his throat is ripping apart. “Why, you brought me here at gunpoint, don’t you remember?”
I steady myself and move my head from side to side. “No. You’re lying.” At least, I hope like hell he’s lying.
If he’s telling the truth, that means I have become the monster. Perhaps there wasn’t a note. I remind myself that I’m a master at denial. It is a traitorous friend. I glance at the wadded-up paper again. But there it is. There was indeed a note.
“Well, maybe you did and maybe you didn’t,” he says on a wheeze, drawing my attention back to him.
“But what do you think your friends in the police department are going to believe? You wouldn’t be the first cop to crack, particularly under the circumstances.
If you tell them the sad, sad story of your life, maybe they’ll feel sorry for you and send you to one of those cushy mental hospitals instead of to prison. Either way, you’re going down, girl.”
I think of the baby I’m carrying, and my heart clutches. “I did not bring you here. You drove that blue truck, didn’t you?”
He shrugs. “What else was I going to do after those two bitches tried to roast me like a fucking Christmas turkey?”
So Hyatt and Reeves did take him. I refuse to call it kidnapping no matter that I am aware of the legal term. “Why come here?”
“That’s for me to know and you to figure out. But we both know what your friends are going to think when they find out,” he singsongs.
Piece of shit. I tamp down my anger. I refuse to allow the bastard to goad me into doing something stupid. The image of a baby being taken from me arrows into my head, rips through my heart. I flinch. My body trembles with the need to end him.
I struggle to push the emotions aside and to focus on my training. I am a cop. A homicide detective. A damn good one. I will not allow this son of a bitch to damage another minute of my life.
I reach for some sense of calm and push a smile into place. “You were scared and wanted to hide, didn’t you? Those women scared you.”
Fury whips across his face. “No bitch has ever scared me,” he roars. “The only thing they did besides set themselves up for a kidnapping charge was screw up my timeline.” He smiles a sinister, sickening display. “But I got back on track because here we are.”
And then I know. That’s what the note was about.
I stare at the way he’s shackled. I laugh.
“You know, finding the hardware store where you bought the chain and the pawn shop or wherever you picked up those police-issue handcuffs won’t be that difficult.
Just time consuming. You might as well tell me the truth.
” I shrug. “Otherwise I’m going to make sure the whole world knows what a coward you are and how your victims got the better of you—just like before. ”
I smile as if he—this—is all just a big joke and I am weary of it. But deep inside, the outrage pounds, desperate to be unleashed. I hold back. This baby I’m carrying is counting on me to be smart. I just need him talking. He’s so full of himself, he’ll have to brag about how smart he is.
He laughs then. “Newhouse took you and turned you into something you could never really be. I told him that deep down you were still mine. I branded you at seven years old. He couldn’t wash that away.”