Mariah Stewart - Last Look

“We’d love it. Thanks.”

“Where would you like to start?” She folded her arms over her chest, her eyes never leaving Andrew’s face. “We have the stables, the pond, the gardens…”

“I noticed some horses out in the pasture there,” he said. “How about we start there?”

“Sure thing,” she drawled and stepped between Andrew and Dorsey. “Are you a horseman, Agent Shields?”

Aubrey sidled up to Andrew and touched his arm in a follow-me gesture. The two of them walked side by side down the walk, leaving Dorsey to roll her eyes and tag along, Aubrey chatting incessantly, Andrew occasionally nodding agreeably. Aubrey was playing the Southern belle, and Andrew was playing along.

“You, there, Sugar Plum. You come on over here and be sweet,” Aubrey called to the chestnut mare that pranced inside the fence. “Come say hello to our new friend, Andrew.”

The horse leaned over the fence just as a car sped up the drive. State Senator Natalie Randall-Scott parked her sedan next to Andrew’s and jumped out. She wasted no time in hurrying over to the fence.

“Natalie, honey, you’re just in time. This is Agent Shields-” Aubrey began the introductions and her sister cut her off.

“I know who he is. Agent Collins, Agent Shields.” Natalie offered her hand first to Dorsey, then to Andrew. “Natalie Scott.”

Before either of them could respond, she turned to her sister and said, “So much for keeping this whole mess under wraps.”

She pointed toward the end of the drive. “I’ve had two news vans following me since I left my office. I had to call the state police to send a few troopers over to block off the drive here and to limit access to my home.”

“So the story’s out,” Dorsey said.

“Apparently,” the senator responded dryly. “Out with a vengeance.”

“Then I suggest we warn Mother and Paula Rose,” Aubrey said.

“I’ve already called everyone. Chief Bowden is on his way over to Sylvan Road. He’ll do the best he can to keep things under control there. I’m wondering if we should move Mother and Father here until this blows over. I think we need to…” Natalie stopped herself, then turned to the agents and said, “I’m sure you can appreciate how difficult this has been for our family. I don’t want our parents unduly harassed by the media. This entire thing has been simply…” She sought the right word.

“A mess,” Aubrey said. “It’s just a damned mess.”

“Aubrey,” Natalie chided her.

“Well, it is. There’s just no other way to describe it. It’s a damn mess and it’s got Momma and Daddy just beside themselves.” Gone was the Southern lady who’d been trying to sweet-talk the hunky FBI agent into forgetting why he was there. “If she was alive, she never should have gone away, and she never should have stayed away all this time. She should have come home.”

“Aubrey, you and I both know Shannon wouldn’t have taken off on her own,” Natalie interjected. “You know she had to have been forced. Kidnapped, maybe by someone involved in white slavery. You hear about that all the time now, but it’s nothing new. Whoever it was who took her forced her onto a path she never would have followed willingly.”

Spoken like a true politician, Dorsey thought.

“Well, of course she was forced, Natalie. Of course she wouldn’t have done those terrible things if she’d had a choice. But she could have come home before this. She could have escaped and come home long before now.” Aubrey crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t blame her for leaving. I know she didn’t have a choice being abducted back then. But I do blame her for staying away as long as she did, making us all suffer all these years…making Momma so sad and Daddy so bitter.” Aubrey’s eyes welled with tears.

And coming back from the dead at a most inconvenient time, Dorsey was tempted to add. Instead she said, “I’m sure this has been incredibly distressing for all of you.”

“You have no idea, Agent Collins,” Aubrey addressed Dorsey directly for the first time.

“Do either of you remember if Shannon had been upset or depressed in the days before she disappeared?” Andrew signaled Dorsey that the time for his interrogation had come.

“Not that I noticed, no.” Aubrey continued to dab at her eyes with the tissue she’d pulled from a pocket in her skirt. “If she was, she hid it well. And she was sort of private about things, you know? She wouldn’t have said anything. She was big on writing in her diary, but she wasn’t much for talking about things.”

“Any idea where that diary is now?” he asked.

“No. I don’t remember ever seeing it after…well, after Shannon was no longer with us,” Aubrey told them.

“Natalie, had Shannon confided in you about any problems she might have had?” Andrew turned his attention to the senator.

“I was away at college that year and didn’t get home much. I’m afraid I wasn’t there for her, if she needed me,” Natalie said solemnly. She turned to Andrew and asked, “There’s obviously something going on here that we’re not being told. You’ve been here what, three days, and yet you’re still here asking questions. Why?”

Before Andrew could answer, Aubrey asked, “What do you think happened back then, Agent Shields?”

“Our investigation has concluded that Shannon had not been kidnapped but ran away on her own accord.”

“What?” Aubrey gasped.

“That’s preposterous.” Natalie’s face went stony, much as her mother’s and grandmother’s had. “Why, even your own FBI man back then believed Eric had killed her.”

“For the past six years or so, Shannon was living with a roommate in Deptford,” Andrew told them. “She told the roommate she’d been traveling around the South on her own for years. There’s no question she hadn’t been kidnapped, she’d told her roommate she was a runaway. The question is, what was she running from?”

“Were either of you aware that your sister was a cutter?” Dorsey asked.

“A what?” Aubrey frowned.

Dorsey explained.

“No, of course not.” Aubrey shook her head. “That’s the sickest thing I ever heard. Shannon was not crazy. She never would have done something like that.”

“Girls who cut aren’t crazy,” Dorsey said. “They’re in pain, and they’re trying to find a way to make the pain go away.”

“So they inflict more pain on themselves?” Aubrey snorted. “That makes a lot of sense.”

“It does to those who cut,” Dorsey said softly.

“The point,” Andrew said, breaking in, “is that girls who exhibit this behavior are suffering, most likely from some sort of abuse or trauma.”

“You’re suggesting that Shannon was being abused.” Aubrey’s emotion was gone in a snap, replaced with a cool composure. “That she ran away because she was being abused.”

“I’m suggesting that something happened to her that made her run away. That same something may have been the reason she turned to self-mutilation,” Andrew told her.

“How do you know that my sister engaged in this…cutting herself thing.” There was no trace of Aubrey’s earlier warmth.

“We saw the scars on her arms. And her shoulders, and her legs,” he told her. “They couldn’t have been caused by anything else. We’ve established the behavior. We’re trying to find out what trauma caused it.”

“The trauma of being kidnapped and forced into prostitution would have done it,” Aubrey snapped.

“Aubrey, I think Agent Shields has established that was not the case,” Natalie said calmly. “ Shannon ran away-and stayed away-for a reason.”

The sisters exchanged a look that was difficult to read.