Allison Brennan - Silenced

“Did you smell it?”

“When I got downstairs. By that time, the smoke was coming up through the floor vents. Ivy said to run out the front because she saw someone in the back.”

Kate asked, “Did anyone else see the intruder?”

“No, why do you care?”

“I’m just trying to get an understanding of what happened, maybe someone else could identify him.”

“It was dark, and we’ve always been security conscious, but particularly now.”

“Now? Why now?”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with the fire.”

“Is it because Ivy brought her sister to live in the house?” Lucy asked carefully.

“Partly.”

“After the fire, what did you do?”

“We split up. We had to disappear. We didn’t know if the intruder was hanging out or what.”

Kate asked, “Did you have reason to believe someone was going to attack you?”

“No, but-” She hesitated.

Lucy asked, “Kerry, we understand that you want to protect Ivy. It sounds like you and Ivy were very close.”

“You don’t understand what we’ve been through. The last two weeks have been so hard on her-”

“Since Sara came to live with her.”

Again, hesitation. “Do you know who their father is?”

“Yes.”

“Ivy was terrified of him. And nothing scared her. Ever since I met her, when she finally trusted me enough to tell me her plans, it’s been about saving enough money to rescue Sara and disappear. That’s why she agreed to Wendy’s proposition.”

Kate and Lucy exchanged an optimistic look.

Kerry continued. “Wendy ran our group. I don’t know how Ivy and Wendy hooked up, they knew each other before I met them. Wendy had a great system. We were making enough money for the house, and to save money for S-Day.”

“What was S-Day?”

“February second. Sara’s birthday. The day we planned to rescue her.”

“That’s still seven months from now-” Kate began.

“No, last February.” Kerry took a deep breath before continuing. “Ivy didn’t think it through. She wanted to get Sara away from her father before her fourteenth birthday. Because Ivy knew he would rape her on that day. It’s what happened to her older sister, it’s what happened to Ivy.

“But,” Kerry continued, “she didn’t factor in that for six years, Sara thought she was dead. Then all of the sudden, her sister is standing in her bedroom telling her that her father is an evil prick who’s going to rape her. What would you do if someone you loved had died, you went to the funeral, then they just walk in and want you to run away?”

Lucy could picture the scene vividly. “Were you there?” she asked Kerry.

“I was the driver, waiting in the woods.” She laughed humorlessly. “I tried to warn Ivy, but she can be stubborn. And I guess I wanted to save Sara before she had to suffer through that.”

“What did Sara do?” Kate asked.

“Started screaming. Ivy had to leave her or be caught. At that point? He would have really killed her, not just pretended she was dead.”

“Pretended?” Hans asked. “Did Edmonds know Ivy faked her suicide?”

“Faked? She ran away. She tried to take her sister with her, but Sara was only eight and didn’t want to go. She found out through his television show that he’d told everyone she’d killed herself. But that was before we hooked up.”

Lucy understood now how Ivy had spiraled into such dangerous activities. While anyone can disappear into a big city, surviving cost money. If everyone thought you were dead, it was both freeing and soul-destroying. At fourteen, young Hannah Edmonds had no one to help her.

“Ivy was so depressed afterward,” Kerry continued. “Wendy used that.”

“You didn’t like Wendy?”

“No,” Kerry said without hesitation. “She was selfish and manipulative. She used Ivy. Ivy knew she was being used, but she was getting what she wanted, so she let Wendy get away with all this crap.”

Lucy asked, “And that’s when Ivy agreed to this proposition?”

“Wendy was videotaping her clients. These weren’t just sex tapes; some of these guys are total pervs with all their weird-ass fetishes. Who cares anymore if two consenting adults have sex? And proving Wendy was a call girl would be next to impossible. But if you found out that your doctor liked to wear women’s underwear and high heels while having sex? Or the guy you voted for could only get off if he were being paddled? I told Ivy it was risky, one of her clients would find out. And I was right.”

Hans spoke up for the first time. “Do you think that one of Wendy or Ivy’s clients is responsible for these murders?”

Kerry didn’t say anything at first.

“Kerry,” Lucy said, “Dr. Vigo wants to know if you have any evidence-no matter how small-that it is a client who is responsible?”

“I’ve been thinking about this since I heard about what happened to Wendy-I don’t know. I don’t have any reason to, I just assumed because who else would want them dead?”

Lucy kept her voice calm and soothing, less interrogative than Kate. “It’s all right, Kerry. It was your first thought, and it would have been my first thought, knowing what you know.”

“Do you know more?”

Kate said, “We’re working on it. That’s why this conversation is critical-we have evidence that we can’t connect up. For example, you said that Wendy was video-recording her clients. We found a hidden room in an executive apartment with wires that may have been connected to recording equipment, but the place was wiped down.”

“Apartment seven-ten.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve all used it, but it was Wendy’s place.”

Kate said, “There were people who leased the space. How did Wendy know when it was available?”

“Betty Dare, the manager,” Kerry said as if they were dense. “Betty scheduled the apartment. If she wanted information, she put people in that space. It wasn’t just about sex-it was about secrets. That’s what Ivy said. Ivy knew too much about what Wendy was doing, I think that’s why someone is trying to kill her.”

Kate sent Noah a message about Betty Dare. This could blow the case wide open.

Kate said, “We’ve gone through Wendy’s finances and she’s not getting any unusual payments that would indicate blackmail.”

“It wasn’t always money, not anything easily traceable. I don’t know those details, and I don’t think Ivy did, either. Ivy got paid in cash, though, for using the apartment to record specific clients. She had all that cash in the house when it was set on fire.”

“How much?” Kate asked.

“It depended, between one and two thousand a pop. For an escort night, we made on the high end five hundred. Ivy had a list of clients Wendy wanted on tape, and she was working through them.”

Kate said, “If Wendy wasn’t getting paid in cash, how did she pay Ivy? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t know, but I saw the money, I swear to God.”

“I believe you,” Kate said, “I’m just trying to put conflicting information together. For example, was she being paid in jewelry? Property? Clothing? And if these guys were being blackmailed, why did they still pay her for sex?”

“After they were blackmailed, most stopped being clients. It’s not like they were doing this every night. Maybe a couple times a month. And not everyone was a regular. Many were here in town for business. In our established escort service, we saw mostly out-of-town businessmen. Wendy took the calls, kept the schedule, kept the books, and took twenty percent.”

There had been no record of any of that in her apartment, Lucy remembered. Where were these books? Most likely on a flash drive or something easily concealable. But the FBI had gone through both apartments three times and had found nothing.