Cassie Miles - The Girl Who Couldn't Forget

In the front room, Brooke would have preferred to make a beeline for the exit, but Sloan and two uniformed officers blocked the way. With his holster clipped to his belt and Franny’s too-small poncho covering his shoulders, Sloan looked like a deranged outlaw. She wondered how he had explained his outfit to the cops who had arrived in response to her 911 call.

She checked her watch. Thirty-three minutes had elapsed since she’d spoken to the emergency operator. If this had been an attack by a homicidal maniac, they’d all be dead by now. Nonetheless, she thanked the officers for coming and apologized for the false alarm.

To Sloan, she said, “I’m taking Franny to my house. She’ll be safe with me. Do you plan to investigate the phone calls she received?”

“Yes,” he said curtly.

“Please keep me informed.”

Franny popped up beside them holding a black plastic garbage bag filled with the scraps and glitter from the table. Her fears seemed to have disappeared. She was beaming. Brooke envied her friend’s resilience, even though she didn’t completely believe that bubbly smile.

Before they could escape out the door, one of the uniformed officers stepped forward. “I know you,” he said. “Matter of fact, I recognize both of you with the black hair and blue eyes. You’re two of the Hardy Dolls.”

The emotions Brooke had been holding back erupted. Every muscle in her body tensed. Twelve years ago, six girls—all with black hair and sad blue eyes—had been abducted from their foster homes by a psychopath named Martin Hardy. He had held them captive in an isolated house in the mountains where they’d been shackled, drugged, starved and brutalized. He’d done unspeakable things.

“Hardy Dolls,” the cop repeated. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

She despised the demeaning nickname the press had labeled them with. Hardy Dolls sounded like the six of them were a soccer team or a rock group, instead of the cruel truth that nobody wanted to face—they were throwaway foster kids who nobody missed and nobody searched for. They’d had to save themselves.

“We’re not dolls. Not now. Not ever.”

Without another word, she turned on her heel and stormed out the front door. I never should have left my house.

Yesterday, when Brooke dashed out the door from Franny’s apartment, Sloan hadn’t made the mistake of thinking that she was running away. Fear hadn’t been her motivation. Anger had driven her. She’d left to avoid a fight, and he’d been grateful. Unless he missed his guess, Brooke Josephson was a formidable adversary who might have eviscerated that cop with the big mouth.

In order to verify that opinion and learn more about the victimology of the young women who had been kidnapped, he paid a midmorning visit to George Gimbel. At the retired agent’s home in the foothills west of town, the two men sat on rocking chairs on the front porch, drinking black coffee and watching the pecking chickens outside their coop. A dappled, swayback mare with a big belly that mimicked the girth of her owner grazed in the corral attached to the small barn. Though Sloan could make out the downtown Denver skyline in the faraway distance, the peaceful setting made him feel like he’d gone back in time to the Old West.

Gimbel took off his cowboy hat and dragged his fingers through his unruly gray hair. “There hasn’t been a day in the past twelve years that I haven’t thought about those women. Never felt like we did right by them.”

Sloan had read the files on the case. “From the record, it looks like you were thorough.”

“Oh, yeah, the proper forms were filed. But when it came to an investigation? Nada. ” His thumb and forefinger formed a zero. “They were abducted over a period of four or five months. Six girls went missing, one after another. Where were the cops? Where was the FBI? We dropped the ball. And why? Well, these were all foster kids—teenagers or younger. Everybody assumed they were runaways.”

All too often, victims fell between the cracks. These women had been taken from different homes that were as far apart as Colorado Springs to the south and Cheyenne, Wyoming, to the north. They hadn’t known each other, and there hadn’t seemed to be a connection...except for one. Sloan pointed it out. “If someone in law enforcement had lined up their photos and noticed the similarities in appearance, they would have paid more attention.”

“That’s exactly what happened when the public learned about the kidnappings—intense publicity. Some of the victims were traumatized by the spotlight.”

“Like Brooke.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Gimbel said. “She’s hard to read.”

Sloan remembered her trembling hands, rapid breathing and darting gaze. “From the minute we met, it seemed like she was about to have a panic attack.”

“But she didn’t.”

“Oh. Hell. No. She blasted me with pepper spray and tried to kick me in the groin.”

Gimbel chuckled. “Brooke avoids confrontation, but she never backs down.”

“How did the FBI get involved in the case?”

“When the women escaped, they went to the Jefferson County police, who realized that they were dealing with kidnapping. Since two states—Colorado and Wyoming—were involved, JeffCo was only too happy to pass this big, fat, complicated case to us, where it landed in my lap.” He leaned back and folded his hands across his gut. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw all six of them together. Skinny little things with black hair and blue eyes, they looked so much alike that they could have been sisters. Actually, two of them are identical twins.”

“Hardy Dolls,” Sloan said.

“Brooke hated when the media started using that moniker, and I don’t blame her. If that girl is a doll, she’s sure as hell an action figure. To survive in captivity, she had to be tough. To engineer an escape with five other girls, she had to be smart.”

Sloan agreed. In the testimony given by the others, it was obvious how much they respected Brooke. Their descriptions of the escape showed an extreme degree of planning from the fourteen-year-old. Oddly, Brooke had said very little. Her statement was limited to short answers and claims that she didn’t remember. A complex woman, there was something about her that fascinated him. “She took charge, but she wasn’t the oldest.”

“Layla was sixteen.”

“And Layla Tierney is the reason I’m following up. When Franny started getting threatening phone calls, she contacted the others to find out if they’d received similar anonymous contacts. She never reached Layla.”

“She disappears from time to time,” Gimbel said. “Brooke will know how to find her.”

He was glad for another reason to be in touch with her. “I appreciate any advice. Victimology is new to me. My training put more emphasis on the criminals and psychopaths.”

“Three months ago, when you got assigned to the Denver office, they said we were lucky to have you.” There was a hint of bitterness in his tone. “You’re only a few credits short of a PhD in psychology. Is that right?”

Sloan nodded. “I’m working on my dissertation.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m more impressed with the fact that you served in the navy.”

“Which is how I paid for college.” He hadn’t joined the navy out of a sense of duty or patriotism, but he’d gotten more from his service than he ever expected. His dad had told him that the US Navy would teach him to be a man. In this case, Dad might have been right.

“I never enlisted,” Gimbel said, “but I figure I paid my dues with a twenty-seven-year career in the FBI.”

Sloan rose from his chair and went to the banister, where he watched the hens and avoided making direct eye contact with Gimbel. He didn’t want their meeting to turn into a confrontation between the grizzled old veteran and the smart-ass college boy. Not that he was a kid at thirty-two.