Shattered (14 page)

Neither one of them had received any more phone calls. For Guy's part, that was good news. To Carol, it meant only heartbreak, anxiety, and sleeplessness.

She went down the steps and onto the soft sand. Her back had been helped by all the time she had spent sitting in her contour chair at the office that weekend, but she still wasn't strong enough to resume her morning run. Instead, she started down the beach at a moderate walking pace, seeking out the firm sand, stretching her legs. There were a few vague shapes far down the beach—intrepid spring breakers determined to get to the beach even if it was raining—but for all intents and purposes she was alone.

Or so she thought.

The sound of the surf was muffled by the fog, so that the thud of running footsteps, as they approached her from behind, were perfectly audible. Glancing over her shoulder, Carol had a glimpse of a tall man in a gray hooded sweatshirt and running shorts, his face lost in the mist and the folds of his hood. She stepped aside to let him past. He veered in her direction. Carol kept walking, faster now, moving into softer sand so that he could pass on the water side. He didn't.

Her stride was slowed by the heavy sand and she could hear his heavy breathing now. Her fists tightened at her sides and she thought,
Damn you, Guy. Damn you for making me afraid
.

She stopped and whirled around, her fists clenched and her heart pounding. He stopped, and pushed back his hood.

“Hi,” he said, smiling.

It was a moment before Carol could speak. “Mr. Carlton,” she said. “I mean—Ken.” She hoped he mistook her quickness of breath for the aftereffects of exertion. She felt like a fool, particularly since it took her so long to remember—”That's right, you're a full-time resident now.”

She had given him his key personally on Saturday, but the office had been so busy they had not had a chance to talk. She gestured around rather aimlessly. “So, how do you like it so far?”

He laughed. “The weather could use some improvement. Other than that, it's perfect.”

Now Carol laughed. “Obviously, you haven't been to town since you got here.”

“Do you mean the traffic problem?”

“I'd say having to park across the bridge to get to the post office constitutes a problem, yes.”

He grinned. “I live in Tallahassee, I'm used to it.” He gestured back toward her house. “That's yours, right?”

“That's right.”

“I thought I recognized it the first time I passed.”

Carol said cautiously, “The first time?” Had it been his footprints she had seen on the boardwalk? And if so, why hadn't he simply come up and rung the bell?

He nodded. “I've been running for an hour. It's an Adam Jackson design, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is,” Carol said, pleased and flattered as always when someone recognized her house.

“I think I might have seen it in Architectural Digest some years back.”

“It's been featured a couple of times.” They started walking up the beach, and Carol said, “Don't let me interrupt your run.”

He shook his head. “No, I'm cooling down.”

Carol found she was glad for the company, and was surprised at how much safer she felt in the company of a man, even on the beach—her own beach. She hated the fact that some unknown monster somewhere out there had that much power over her, robbing her of her security before she even knew it was gone.

They talked for a few minutes about her house, about architecture, about design in general, and she enjoyed it. It was good to think about something besides her troubles for a while, and Ken was an interesting and articulate companion.

He said, “So how far is it to the end of the beach?”

“To the Cut, you mean? Too far for me to walk. Maybe five miles.”

He considered that. “I guess I could walk down there okay. But I don't know how I'd get back.”

Carol laughed. “That's what a lot of people forget when they start out for that great camera shot of the lighthouse.”

“Too bad it's so foggy though. I'd like to drive down there. Good fishing?”

“My husband—ex-husband”—she hated it when she did that—”says it's the best. He used to fish right off the sea break. Marlin, grouper, sea bass—and an awful lot of sharks.” She wrinkled her nose. “I guess 'good fishing' is in the eye of the beholder.”

He chuckled. “Maybe I'll pass on the fishing. So listen, how soon do you think we could get together for a property tour?”

Carol didn't even hesitate. In matters of business, instinct took over. “How about today? The weather's too lousy to do much of anything else.”

“Sounds good. Maybe if the weather clears, we can see some of it by boat.”

“Nothing much to see except deserted islands,” she pointed out, “but I'm game.”

“Great. I'll just go change.”

She glanced at her watch. “Is an hour okay? I'll pick you up at your place.”

He grinned. “That's right, you know where I live. See you in an hour then.”

They parted with a wave, and Carol hurried back to her house. 

The blinking light on the answering machine was still, and Carol was glad she was getting out of the house. She didn't know how much more of the waiting she could take.

Still, she didn't leave without transferring her calls to her cell.

~

Chapter Seventeen

D
eputy Derrick Long knew that the Dennisons— particularly Carol Dennison—thought his interest in their case was purely perfunctory. They couldn't have been more wrong.

Since Friday afternoon he had patrolled the beachside streets of St. T. thirty-seven times. He had arrested twelve drunks—three of whom had thrown up in the back of his patrol car— four kids for lewd and lascivious behavior, six for possession of less than an ounce of a controlled substance, and two because he was just plain out of patience and they made him mad. He had issued forty-three traffic citations and sixty-two warnings. And he had accomplished all of that while spending what felt like half of his life caught in a slow-moving melange of honking horns, rebel yells, and scantily clad teenage girls hanging out of sun roofs. When the call from Guy Dennison was relayed to him, he had to restrain himself from falling to his knees and thanking God for deliverance.

“Richard Wakefield Saddler,” Long reported to the sheriff late that afternoon. It had taken disappointingly little time to run down the details. “A construction worker from Fiddler's Cove, divorced, one son. He worked a circuit that took him just about all over the Panhandle—Tallahassee, Appalach, Panama City, Port St. Joe, the islands. And just about everywhere he went, there was one sad young lady left behind. In 1993, Guy Dennison was working as a crime reporter for that TV station in Tallahassee, and he latched on to the story about this thirteen-year-old girl that was assaulted in her house while her parents were out. He did the report from her room, where the attack supposedly took place. I haven't seen the tape yet, but apparently it was some powerful stuff. There was a collection of stuffed animals on a shelf over the bed, and at the end of the report, he took down a toy lamb and held it up to the camera, you know like reporters do when they want to tug at old ladies' heart strings, and he said something about lost innocence. I don't have a quote and he couldn't remember. Anyway, the girl's name was Mary Lynn White.”

“Mary had a little lamb,” Sheriff Case said softly. “This is one sick bastard.”

Long nodded. “Well, that report and the ones that followed ignited a real firestorm of public outrage, and eventually Saddler was tracked down and charged with that assault and linked to eight others around the Panhandle. I should mention, by the way, that little Mary was no lamb, if you know what I mean, but she was just thirteen years old and she claimed he raped her. Anyway, the prosecutor got over-zealous, tried to charge him with nine counts of rape and child molestation. The jury would only convict on one. He got out on early release last month, address 1482 Cherrybrook Drive, Gainesville. I called the sheriff's department over there and asked them to check it out for me. Turns out there's nothing at 1482 Cherrybrook but a car wash. Saddler's parole officer was real sad to hear that.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Case.

“Right.”

Case was silent for a long time. His face, profiled in the harsh light of the window that overlooked the parking lot, looked drawn and rough-shaven; they had all worked double shifts since Friday.

Finally he said, “There's a lot of things about this I don't like, Deputy.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sheriff looked at him. “We've got a child molester and a rapist running around our town during spring break. That's the number one thing I don't like.”

“I'm having mug shots faxed over. That should be some help tracking him down. And we don't really know that he's in town. The florist said that the order was charged to a credit card, but my guess is it's going to turn up stolen.”

Case heard him out patiently. “Two and a half years ago,” he said, “Guy Dennison's daughter takes off to see a concert in Tallahassee, and never comes back. Now we've got this convicted child molester calling up Dennison and asking him if he knows where his daughter is. That's the second thing I don't like. And I don't like it a lot.”

This time when the sheriff looked up, there was a kind of dread resignation in his eyes. Long knew what he was going to ask before he said it.

“I don't suppose we know where Saddler was the summer Dennison's daughter took off, do we?”

Long swallowed, then nodded. “He was in Tallahassee.” That was the first thing he'd checked.

Sheriff Case said nothing for a moment. “That,” he said at last,” is the third thing I don't like.” Then, “Get to work on tracking down that credit card. Start spreading those mug shots around when they come in. As of now, you're on this one full-time.”

Long's shoulders straightened smartly. “Yes, sir.” He turned for the door, then hesitated. “Should I tell Dennison what we've found?”

After a moment Case sighed. “No,” he said, “I will.”

~

Chapter Eighteen

T
hey had taken refuge in the Tahoe from a brief cold downpour when Carol's car phone rang. Afterward, she would think a lot about the fate that was at work then. She and Ken had spent the morning walking deep beachfront lots, lunched at Michael's, and in the afternoon, wandered far and deep into the interior of the island, mostly on foot. She hadn't thought about the car phone once, nor had she remembered to remove it from the console and slip it into her pocket when they left the Tahoe.

So as they hurried inside the SUV, laughing in the silly way people do when they unexpectedly become drenched, trying to wipe the water from their eyes and squeeze it from their hair, the squeal of the  phone was an alien, intrusive sound. Carol had barely closed the driver's side door and was fumbling in her purse for the car keys so that she could start up the heater, and she answered the phone in an absent impatient tone that was due mostly to the fact that she was trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Carol Dennison,” she said and made an apologetic gesture to Ken, who grinned good-naturedly and slicked his hair back with both hands, looking like an old-time mobster.

The silence on the other end of the line hissed. Carol found the key and started to put it in the ignition.

“You're—Kelly's mother, right?”

Carol froze in place. The voice. The voice...

“Yes,” she said, or thought she said, or perhaps merely whispered on the last of the choked-back breath that glided past her lips. “Yes.”

“Listen, you've got to help her. She wants to come home, but she can't get out of here. He watches her all the time. She can't even call you anymore. She thought you'd be here by now. Why didn't you come?”

No, it wasn't the same voice. This woman sounded older, stronger, more in control. The accent was different, the words more clipped. It wasn't Kelly. But it was someone who knew her.

Carol's hand tightened on the phone. Her chest ached with breathlessness. “Who is this?” she demanded hoarsely. “ Who are you?”

She was aware, very dimly, of Ken's growing still in the passenger seat, of his look of concern and interest. Mostly she was aware of the silence on the other end, and how long it seemed to drag on, although in truth it probably lasted no more than a couple of seconds.

The voice returned, a little impatiently, “My name is Tanya. I'm trying to help you and I don't have much time—”

“Who? Who are you?”

“Tanya. Tanya Little. I told you that. The important thing—”

“You know where my daughter is? You know Kelly?”

“Of course, I know! I'm here with her, didn't I just tell you that? Look, I can't talk long. The last time he caught her on the phone he did something...” A catch in her voice. “He hurt her real bad.”

“Who?” The word was screaming in her head, everything was screaming in her head, but when she spoke it out loud, it was little more than a strained croak. “Who hurt her?”

There was a sharp breath and Carol thought the woman wouldn't answer, that she was going to lose her, but then she answered simply, in a flat, tight tone, “Him. He did.”