Allison Brennan - Silenced

She’d been sheltered and protected, knew it and didn’t care.

Then every dream she’d ever had was stolen from her the day she should have walked down the aisle in her gown and cap to accept her diploma.

She’d never go to the Olympics; though she swam in college, her heart wasn’t in it. Instead, she became certified in water search and rescue where her strength as a swimmer helped her find and retrieve people both dead and alive.

She’d never study language, because how could she help people and appease her need for justice if she was a diplomat or a translator? But her language skills helped her understand people from different backgrounds and lifestyles, both spoken and unspoken.

And she’d never have children of her own because she no longer had a womb to carry a baby.

Worse, her pain and suffering, all of the evil that had been done to her, was part of the public record. She had no privacy and never would. Though she’d accepted it, there were days she wanted to scream at the unfairness of life.

But she didn’t. She went on. Because there were no other options.

Her family protected her, and she loved them for it, but sometimes it was too much.

Her eye caught the simple silver picture frame on Cathy’s desk, the one Cathy had glanced at several times during their conversation. She leaned forward and tilted her head so she could see who was in the photo.

Cathy Hummel, much younger, with a man Lucy presumed was her husband, and Jocelyn.

Except Jocelyn was much younger as well. Eighteen? Nineteen? Long before she was working here.

Cathy Hummel stepped back into the room. Her eyes were rimmed red, but dry, and her hands grasped several pieces of crumbled tissues. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled. She sat back down. “I don’t know what else I can do for you.”

“How long have you known Jocelyn?” Lucy asked.

“I told you, she came to work for me when she was twenty-four, out of college-”

“Did you know her before she worked for you?”

“Why?”

“I saw the picture on your desk.”

Cathy stared at the picture. “That was taken the day Jocelyn got her GED,” she said quietly. “She was nineteen, but she hadn’t been in school since she was sixteen.” She shook her head. “This is all sealed, and I’m not going to share it with you. I’m sorry.”

“It may have something to do with her death.”

“It doesn’t.” Cathy’s voice took on an edge of hostility.

Genie spoke up. “Was Jocelyn working with Maddie? Was Maddie in trouble?”

“I told you, Jocelyn wasn’t in the office this week.”

“But you would know why,” Genie said. She leaned forward. “I understand you want to protect Jocelyn. I’m not going to drag her reputation through the slime. I’ll do my best to keep anything not directly related to the case off the books.”

Genie continued. “We haven’t released this information to the press, but we believe that the Taylors and Maddie were killed by the same person or people who killed a known prostitute, Nicole Bellows. Do you know her?”

Cathy’s shocked expression revealed the truth.

“Nicole was the murdered prostitute I read about in the paper this morning?” she asked weakly.

“Yes.” Lucy watched the director closely. “Anything you know, anything that could send us in the right direction, we’d appreciate.”

Tears streamed down Cathy’s face. “I told Jocelyn not to get involved. Not with those girls.”

That surprised Lucy. An organization like MARC always got involved. To them, no one was beyond help.

Cathy continued. “Six months ago, we were hired by the mother of a fourteen-year-old girl who had run away with her boyfriend, a nineteen-year-old high school dropout. She filed a missing persons report and went through proper channels, but the police couldn’t find her.

“Jocelyn tracked down the boyfriend and he was more forthcoming, because she wasn’t a cop. He dumped Amy, left her in Baltimore, and didn’t think twice about her. She wouldn’t ‘pull her weight,’ he said.

“Jocelyn has cultivated a lot of contacts in the tristate area. She traced Amy from Baltimore to DC, and finally to this group of girls who lived in a house on Hawthorne.”

“That’s a nice area,” Genie remarked. “Not where I’d expect prostitutes to live.”

“Jocelyn had met Ivy, the woman who ran the group of call girls, a year ago. She didn’t talk about her much, but they had an understanding, I suppose. Jocelyn claimed Ivy wasn’t like other madams, but in my experience, anyone running prostitutes is a criminal.”

“Ivy?” Lucy asked. “Do you have a last name?”

Cathy shook her head. “I never met her. I told Jocelyn I wanted to, to assess her sincerity, but Ivy wanted no help whatsoever.”

Lucy started to see what the problem was. “And that’s why you and Jocelyn started having problems.”

“No,” Cathy said, without conviction. She shredded the tissue clasped in her hands. “I told her to go to the authorities. The girl, Amy, was fourteen; if we knew where she was, we had a responsibility.” She bit her lip. “I should have done it myself. Jocelyn convinced me to do it her way.”

“What happened to Amy?” Lucy asked, fearing the worst.

“Jocelyn reunited Amy with her mother. A happy ending. I’ve talked to Amy’s mom-she’s doing great. She’s going back to school in the fall, getting her life back. Because Jocelyn didn’t give up.

“Jocelyn had it in her head that she had to save all the girls in Ivy’s house, but some of these girls-like Nicole-had been on the streets for years,” Cathy said. “They were nineteen, twenty, maybe older. There’s a point where you have to focus on your best hope for success. Jocelyn wanted to help those whom no one else would. The hardest cases.”

That’s why Senator Paxton was involved. He was helping those hard cases, the lost causes. Because that’s what he did.

Lucy’s stomach twisted with her conflicted feelings about her former mentor.

“We had an argument about Ivy,” Cathy said. “Jocelyn stopped talking to me, spent more time with that girl, and then on Tuesday morning she called me on my cell phone, early-five A.M. Said Ivy’s house had burned down and she was helping the girls find a place to stay. Nothing else. I came into the office yesterday, and she’d cleaned out her desk. I’ve been trying to call her-” Her voice caught. “How long? How long has she been dead?”

“She was killed late last night.”

“Why didn’t she call me back? She knows I would have done anything for her! I loved her like a daughter.”

Lucy didn’t have the answer to that question. This situation was far more complex than she’d originally thought. But finally, they had a solid direction. It should be easy to find the house on Hawthorne Street that had burned down in the early hours of Friday morning.

“Was Maddie one of the girls in Ivy’s house?” she asked Cathy.

The director nodded. “I don’t know the others, or how many-six, eight, ten.” She put her hands up, then they fell limply to her desk. “Jocelyn was very protective of them. She was driven. And now she’s dead!”

Lucy suspected she knew how many girls had been in the house.

Six blind mice. See how they run.

Cathy unlocked her bottom drawer. She hesitated a moment, then pulled out a file and handed it to Lucy. “I shouldn’t be giving you this. It’s all I have on Ivy. I’m sure Jocelyn has more; I don’t know where, if it’s not at her house.”

The file was thin. Lucy opened it. Inside were two pages of handwritten notes apparently taken by Cathy Hummel. Time Jocelyn was spending with Ivy, observations. The third page was a photograph. It wasn’t a sharp picture, but it showed a young brunette with an aristocratic bone structure and attractive face.