Ellie cursed a blue streak in her mind. Dammit, she needed Mabel awake and talking. Every minute they lost gave the killer either time to escape or to torture Dana Jo or for the children to be transported farther and farther away.
Anxiety needling her, she walked down the hall to the vending machine, bought two cups of coffee, then returned to the waiting room.
“Nice to have cell service in here,” Derrick said as he accepted the coffee from Ellie. “I just talked to Bennett about the background check on Mabel.”
“And?” Ellie asked as she blew on her coffee to cool it.
“Apparently, Mabel has no living family. She was married but divorced and attended counseling after that. Due to the circumstances, Bennett managed to persuade Mabel’s counselor to reveal that Mabel had three miscarriages, which led to depression and then she developed a drinking issue.”
“Wow, we need him working on all our cases,” Ellie said. “That’s not easy information to obtain.”
“Bennett can be very persuasive,” Derrick said with a twitch of a smile. “Anyway, after a DUI, Mabel lost her license for a while and it was a lengthy process to gain reinstatement.”
“Who handled her DUI?”
“The same attorney who handled Minnie’s,” Derrick said, deadpan. “He also assisted Mabel in her efforts to have her license reinstated.”
Ellie’s breath quickened. “The miscarriages could have driven her to desperation and given her reason to encourage teenage clients to choose adoption. With the nursery she’d already decorated, Clara so close to delivery, and her showing up then running from Hazel’s, she probably hoped to convince Clara to allow her to adopt the baby.”
“Exactly.”
Ellie’s thoughts raced. “We need to speak to the attorney.”
“Yes, Will Whittaker.” Derrick frowned. “I asked Bennett to find out whatever he could on the man. He certainly was slick and composed when I met him,” Derrick said.
Ellie grimaced. “Sociopaths usually are.”
ONE HUNDRED
Midnight Ridge
Larry Wheaton knew it was dangerous for him to sneak out of the halfway house. If his parole officer found out, he’d write him up.
But once the wheels of suspicion started turning in his mind, he had to know the truth. Had his son stuck around Midnight Ridge? Was he the madman killing these young girls and kidnapping their babies? What motive would he have to abduct children though?
That was the biggest question eating at him.
But the location of the ridge, the suicides that had now been ruled murders, and their proximity to the lodge were too coincidental to ignore.
He rolled his old jalopy away from the halfway house, waiting to jump in and start the engine until it was far enough away not to be heard. Just as the meteorologist predicted, the storm swirled around him in a blinding haze. The weather and treacherous road conditions didn’t bother him though. Not after spending years in prison, seeing grown men gut each other without batting an eye and watching guards beat the hell out ofinmates just for fun. He was a victim himself to other atrocities that he refused to talk about, even to the prison counselor.
What could she do about it anyway? She had no real power. Telling only brought more violence from the gangs that ruled the inside.
The old jalopy chugged along the snowy road, his wipers and defroster working double time to clear the windshield. Visibility was so poor he couldn’t see where the lines started and stopped, so he hugged the shoulder of the road.
He’d considered going to see the old lodge again when he was first released, the place where he and Franny had once had dreams of building a good life when they were young.
Only both their lives had ended there.
Because of his son.
The stories he remembered from her, the accounts of Wally being violent and cruel, and the whispers from the neighbors about their children being afraid of Wally, kept replaying in his head. Wally had insisted Franny locked him in the dark attic for hours on end. Larry had seen evidence of that in the scratches on the door and the crow feathers scattered around and glued to the walls. Franny insisted she’d locked him in there because she was afraid of him. That once he’d tried to stab her with a kitchen knife. That he put crow feathers on their bed and spread crow’s blood on her plate at the kitchen table.
Why hadn’t he believed his wife?
Pride? Because he hadn’t wanted to admit that his only child was mentally disturbed?
Now that he’d spent time in prison, he knew firsthand that some kids were just born bad, that genetics could play a role in mental illness. He’d had a couple of bad seeds in his cellblock, one who bragged about killing animals as young as five. Another had kept accounts of children he’d bullied and attacked. Saidthat he’d cut off a little girl’s finger when he was six and carried it around in his pocket.
