Progeny (12 page)

“I’ll check the front door and tell you when to go. There was only one car outside—one car with two cops. If they are both out front, you should be fine back there. Go straight through the backyard to the golf course, walk a few houses down, and cut back to the car.”

Angel looked at her with question. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to make sure you get away.”

“Don’t go after the cops, Mama.”

“Baby, please, you have to leave now.” She herded Angel toward the door leading into the house, and then the patio door at the back of the kitchen. “I’ll make sure they are both out front. When I give you the signal, run. Don’t look back.” Carmen grabbed a baseball cap sitting on the kitchen table, and she snugged it down on Angel’s head. “Tuck your hair into that.”

Angel did.

“Remember. No one ever takes us alive,” Carmen said. She rubbed the side of Angel’s face.

“I know.”

“You’re such a good girl.” Carmen hugged her, let out a breath, and went to the front door. She put her eye to the peephole, turned back to Angel, and mouthed the word
go
.

Angel slid the patio door open with the tips of her fingernails so as to not leave any prints. She heard an odd snapping sound but paid it no mind. Angel looked right to left. No one was in the backyard. She looked out to the golf course and saw a few golfers teeing off in the distance and a few more standing on a nearby green. It didn’t appear as though anyone was watching. She tossed the two bags of skin over her shoulder and jogged to the edge of the golf course. She turned right and ran two houses down, taking in everyone that could be seen—no cops, and the golfers didn’t appear close enough to notice her. Angel cut to the right through a backyard when she spotted her car through the gaps between houses. She stopped at the edge of the home on her right and looked up the street. The officers’ patrol car was still parked in front of the Carpenters’ place. She couldn’t see the cops themselves.

Angel’s silver Ford was parked at the curb directly in front of her. She dug the keys from her pocket, held a bag of skin under each arm, and casually walked toward her trunk. She thumbed the button to pop the trunk and glanced right over at the Carpenters’ home.

She froze. The two cops had their guns drawn. Carmen stood a few feet from the home’s front door. The butcher’s apron and clothing she wore were covered in blood. For a split second, Carmen made eye contact with her.

“Dammit,” Angel muttered.

Angel placed the bags in the trunk and walked to the driver’s door. She opened it and took a seat behind the wheel. She stared out through the car’s windshield at Carmen and the police. Carmen appeared to be talking with the two officers. Angel started the car and made a U-turn in the street.

“Goodbye, Mama,” Angel said.

The sound of gunfire came from behind.

“Marcy White, this is Lieutenant Carl Kane,” Hank said.

I stood from my desk and shook the woman’s hand. Mrs. White wore a pair of jeans with a light-blue zip-up fleece. She had blond hair past her shoulders and thin rectangular glasses with black frames. I put her at an average height and weight for a woman in her midfifties. “Have a seat, Mrs. White,” I said.

She did. Hank sat beside her.

“Thanks for coming in,” I said.

“Sure. I told the sergeant here, when we spoke, that we probably could have just done this over the phone. I’m not sure I’m going to be much help to whatever you’re trying to find out. Like I told him, my encounter with her wasn’t much.”

“Okay, well, we’ll try not to take up too much of your day. Can you just run through how this restraining order came about?” I asked.

“Well, it was some time ago, as you know. Basically, she just started stalking us out of the blue. My husband and I kept seeing this woman everywhere we went. We thought it was a coincidence at first, but then it became troubling when we saw her standing in front of our house. I called the cops. They just wanted me to report the next time I saw her so they could question her. I did, and they picked her up. We’d filed the restraining order at the advisement of the police and haven’t seen or heard from her since. That’s about it, really.”

I wrote down what she said.

“What did she give as a reason why she was following you and your husband?” Hank asked.

Mrs. White brought her hand to her mouth and let out a breath into her knuckles. “She didn’t.”

“Nothing at all?” I asked.

She shook her head. Hank glanced down at the woman’s feet.

“Do you know anything about this woman? What kind of car she was driving, where she was living, anything?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, no. Like I said, our encounter wasn’t much. Why are you looking for her?”

“Well, we found her prints in connection with a couple of homicides,” Hank said.

Mrs. White’s eyes grew. “Homicides?” she asked.

“Correct. If you can think of anything, it could be helpful,” I said.

“I, um, I guess I don’t really know what to say. I mean, I don’t know anything about her, really.”

I wasn’t sold in the least on her lack of knowledge about Carmen Simms. I had a pretty trained eye for liars, and that woman’s body language told me she was lying. That, and she kept repeating the same phrases, trying to convince us that she knew nothing. Besides those obvious signs of deceit, I could hear her feet shuffling on the carpet under her chair. I tapped the tip of my pen against the paper I was taking notes on. “Mrs. White, what do you know of Jack Redding?” I asked.

She didn’t respond. Hank and I waited. We’d say nothing until she answered. Almost a full minute of silence passed before she did.

“Jack Redding?” she asked.

I said nothing. She was trying to stall for more time to think.

She let out a breath and rocked her head back. “Um.”

More stalling. I was about to give her a little encouragement, but Hank beat me to it.

He reached out and set his hand on the arm of her chair. “Now, keep in mind, we are looking for this woman in connection with a couple homicides. I have to be honest—it seems like you have something to tell us, Marcy. If you do, now is the time to do that.”

Hank’s lines were delivered with impeccable precision.

She rubbed her eyes. “Jack Redding was my daughter’s biological father.”

“You and…” Hank said, trailing off.

“Oh, God, no. My husband and I adopted her.”

I nodded.

She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m just trying to protect my daughter. I don’t want her involved in anything having to do with that woman.”

“Is she involved with Carmen Simms?” I asked.

“No. No. No.” Marcy shook her head repeatedly. “The restraining order was because she was stalking Angel, my daughter.”

“Mrs. White, do you want to go through the restraining order for us again, now?”

She let out a long breath. “Carmen Simms began stalking my daughter before she moved back in with my husband and me. Honestly, I’m not even sure how Angel, our daughter, and this woman met, but she knew things about Angel that no one else did.”

“Knew things like what?” Hank asked.

“She knew that Jack Redding was her father. I mean, when we adopted her, we had her last name changed to ours. Somehow this woman found her and told her who her biological father was.”

“She didn’t know, prior?” I asked.

“No. Obviously, she knew she was adopted, and we never tried to hide it from her, but we never thought it was a good idea to tell her who her biological parents were.”

“She never questioned it?” Hank asked.

“Not until she met this Carmen Simms, who claimed to be her mother in 2008.”

“Claimed to be her mother?” I asked.

“Yes. Which she is certainly not. Her mother was Cynthia Redding, who committed suicide. That’s how Angel ended up at the adoption agency. She sat there for almost two years before my husband and I adopted her. No one wanted her once they learned who her biological father was.”

“Did Carmen Simms offer up any proof of this to your daughter?” I asked.

Marcy shook her head. “I don’t know. She never offered any proof of it to me. I guess she told Angel that she had paperwork that proved it. She said that Cynthia Redding stole her.”

“Stole her?” I asked.

Marcy shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what she said. I told her to show me proof, and she never did.”

“Okay, what exactly was the relationship between your daughter and Carmen Simms?” I asked.

Mrs. White shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. At the time she met Carmen, Angel was struggling mentally. I think somehow she latched on to this mystery woman claiming to be her mother. I did some digging on Carmen at the time and found she had been locked up in a state mental-health facility. I told Angel that, but I’m not sure how much good it did.”

“You said your daughter was struggling mentally. What does that mean?” I asked.

“Through her teens and her early twenties, she suffered from manic depression, which I guess they call bipolar disorder now. It never really went away, I guess, but sometimes it’s worse than others. She was twenty-six, living on her own, and in between jobs. She would start relationships and end them just as fast. Well, one night, we get a call that she tried committing suicide—she cut her wrists. It turned out she was fine. A ‘call for help’ is what the doctors called it. They observed her for a few days and released her to my husband and me. We insisted she move back home with us for a while. Well, when she moved back in with us is when this Carmen started popping up. She’d call for Angel, show up in the middle of the night, you name it. And this woman would get nasty if we didn’t let her talk to, or see, Angel. There was seriously something wrong with her. It ended up getting scary, so we forbade Angel from communicating with her and got the restraining order. The woman, thankfully, disappeared after that.”

I wrote down everything she said in my notepad.

“Does your daughter still live with you now?” I asked.

“No. She moved into a condo over in Clearwater about a year back. She started working as a waitress at Biddy’s restaurant—you know, the one right on the beach there.”

“I’m familiar,” I said.

“Has your daughter had contact with this woman since?” Hank asked.

“Not that I know of. No.”

“How old is she? Your daughter?” I asked.

“Just turned thirty-three.”

“Her last name is the same as yours?” I asked.

“It is. You’re not going to drag her into this are you?”

“Mrs. White, we will have to talk to her regarding this woman. There’s a chance that they are still in contact.”

“I really don’t think there is.”

“Either way, we’ll need to speak with her. Do you have a contact number?” I asked.

Mrs. White rolled her neck back and forth for a moment but then gave me the number. We gave her our cards with the instructions to call us if she saw the woman or thought of anything else. Then Hank saw her out. I picked up my desk phone and dialed the number she’d given me for Angel White, her daughter. I wanted a face-to-face interview with her. Someone picked up on the second ring.

“Hello?” a woman answered.

“Angel White?” I asked.

“Speaking.”

“This is Lieutenant Carl Kane from the Tampa Police Department.”

“Okay,” she said.

“We just had your mother, Marcy, in here for an interview regarding Carmen Simms. I’d like to schedule something with you to talk about her.”

“Adoptive mother. What is this regarding?”

“We’re trying to gather more information on the whereabouts of Miss Simms. We need to ask her some questions.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Well, that may be, yet we’d still like to have a conversation about her. When would you be able to stop in?”

Silence came from her end of the phone for a moment before she spoke.

“Do you really need me to come in there? I mean, I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

“Maybe it would be easier if we came to you?” I asked.

“Whatever, fine. I’ll come. Where and when?”

“We’re at the police headquarters in downtown Tampa on Franklin—third floor. Just ask for Lieutenant Kane. The sooner you could come in, the better.”

“I’m at work tonight until close. The soonest would be tomorrow.”

“Biddy’s, right?” I asked. “Nice place.”

“Yeah, I guess. What time do you want me to come in?” she asked.

I thought about my appointment to view the house with Callie. “Eight o’clock?” I asked.

“That’s fine.”

“Okay. Again, it’s Lieutenant Ka—” I heard a dial tone in my ear. She’d hung up. I placed the phone back on the receiver as Hank returned from seeing Mrs. White from the station.

“Get a hold of her?” Hank asked.

“Yeah.” I rocked back in my chair. “She didn’t seem too eager to help.”

“No?” he asked.

“No.”

“How did she seem?”

I scratched my cheek. “I don’t know.” I clicked at the keys of my computer, to bring her up.

“Checking her out?” Hank asked.

I nodded.

Her information came up on the screen. I glanced at her driver’s license information: five foot ten, thirty-three years old, one hundred twenty-eight pounds. She had dark, straight, hair and brown eyes. I looked at the photo. Her face was thin, her nose small, her chin a bit squared. She looked plain—not overly attractive yet certainly not unattractive. She appeared average. The only thing that stood out at all was the dark eyeshadow she wore. I scrolled down the page, looking for any priors. She was clean.

The captain banged on the glass behind my head, breaking my focus on the computer.

“We got her! Clearwater!” he shouted from inside his office.

Hank and I headed over to Bostok’s office.

“They found her?” I asked.

“She’s dead. At least, we think it’s her. The woman had no ID on her. Clearwater PD shot her when she tried attacking the two officers that were dispatched to the Carpenter house, the juror residing in Clearwater. I guess this woman we assume to be Simms was inside the home and came out covered in blood.”