Лиза Гарднер - Never Tell - A Novel (A D.D. Warren and Flora Dane Novel)

“But you don’t know what something?” D.D. spoke up.

Cathy shook her head. “She started eating lunch in her own classroom. Catching up on work, she told me. I didn’t question it the first few days. But, again, in hindsight, it’s been nearly a month. That’s a long time to be holed up in a classroom.”

“You ever stop in, check up with her?” Phil asked.

“Sure. She’d wave me off and I’d let it go. I mean, this time of year, with the holidays coming, the kids are crazy and we’re all losing it a little.”

“Do you know how she met Conrad?” D.D. asked.

“Um.” Cathy seemed to have to stop and think at this sudden change in topic. “Through a friend, when she worked at her first school. One of the teachers there had a cookout at his house and Conrad was there. They bought their house in Winthrop four years ago. That’s what made Evie apply here; it’s a much better commute.”

“She struggle with her marriage?” Phil asked.

Cathy shook her head. “She wasn’t one for that kind of talk.”

“What do you mean that kind of talk?”

“Personal. We talked teaching mostly. About being females in our respective fields. About how to get more students excited for two subjects a lot of kids already think they don’t like or can’t do. We talked shop, I guess. We ate in the teachers’ lounge, after all.”

“You never went out after work? Ladies’ night at the martini bar?” D.D. pressed.

“Evie always went home. Even when Conrad was traveling. I don’t know. She seemed the homebody type. Plus, many of the projects going on at their place she did herself. It wasn’t that he was fixing it up. They both had talents.”

Which, again, D.D. found interesting. Where had a rich girl who grew up in Cambridge learned home improvement skills?

“What about her relationship with students?” Phil asked now.

“Her students loved her.”

“All of her students?”

Cathy shook her head. “Nothing stands out. We’re nearly halfway through the school year now; Evie didn’t mention having problems with any particular teen.”

“What about a student who might’ve needed extra attention? Been unusually demanding of her time.”

Again, the science teacher shook her head. “You might ask Sharon—Principal Ahearn. I hadn’t heard of anything.”

Phil and D.D. exchanged glances. The principal already seemed like a dead end when it came to learning more about Evelyn Carter. Asking for detailed information about students probably wasn’t going to get them any further; school administrators were naturally disinclined to share those kinds of records.

“Did Evie have a computer?” Phil asked now, nodding to the one on Cathy’s desk. “One assigned for her by the school, or she would’ve used to contact students.”

“Sure. We all have school-issued laptops. Though much of what we do is handled by apps now, on our personal cell phones. Attendance, school grades, you name it. The modern era.”

In other words, Evie should have a computer in her classroom. Which, once they had the proper warrant, might prove a useful bread crumb given their total lack of a digital trail right now. E-mails with students, other staff, maybe even Google searches Evie had felt safer doing in the relative privacy of her workplace, rather in her own home, just down the hall from her husband …

Phil’s cell rang. He glanced at the screen, frowned. “Excuse me a moment.”

He put the phone to his ear. D.D. could tell it was one of his fellow detectives, probably Neil or Carol, based on the fact that Phil didn’t speak as much as grunt. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Then, turning toward D.D.: “We gotta go.”

Cathy was already rising to standing. Phil handed her a card. “Thank you for your time, we’ll be in touch.”

He didn’t give the bewildered educator time to reply or ask any other questions. Instead, he was already turning on his heel, heading toward the hall with D.D. in his wake.

“What, what, what?” she demanded as she finally reached his side.

“You’re never going to believe this. Evie and Conrad’s home, our crime scene …”

D.D.’s heart sank. She didn’t need to hear what Phil had to say next.

“It’s on fire.”

Chapter 9 FLORA

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW about Jacob Ness:

He was old and ugly and disgusting, the kind of guy that a pretty blond college girl like me never would’ve given the time of day. His hair hung in greasy hanks. He had a mouth full of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. He was built like a scarecrow, all massive belly and four scrawny limbs.

He wasn’t partial to showering or any other kind of hygiene. He not only looked repulsive, but smelled that way, too. Every smell that ever made you want to vomit, that was his personal cologne.

He was strong. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, with his flabby gut and flaccid limbs. But he had that skinny-guy thing going on—arms like bands of steel. I tried to fight him. As he dragged me back to the coffin-shaped box, as he forced me into various acts of depravity. I’d been a strong, athletic girl in the beginning. But I never won. Not once.

Jacob had a family. Those details are sketchier for me. A father he referred to only as Dickhead or Asshole. The father had been a trucker as well, but Jacob implied that he only came home long enough to smack his kid around. Is he still alive? Did he ever read about what his son did? Mourn his death? Shake his head that Jacob had been stupid enough to get caught? I have no idea.

Jacob was raised by a chain-smoking mother who worked two jobs. When he was little, he talked about a grandmother who helped watch him during the day. According to Jacob, when he was five or six, he found his father’s stash of porn, and that’s when his obsession with sex began.

Jacob was a sex addict. He was very honest on that subject. He also made it clear he had no intention of reform.

I don’t know what happened to the mom. The police or Samuel once mentioned to me that Jacob had been using his mother’s address in Florida as his permanent address. That’s one of the things that helped them make the connection between him and my disappearance. In the beginning, however, he hadn’t kept me in Florida, but in some cabin in the mountains of Georgia. The kind of place with no neighbors and few witnesses.

He was married once. He told me about that. He tried to do the traditional thing. Have a wife, spend night after night in the missionary position. That went so well he beat the crap out of the woman and ended up arrested for domestic abuse after the docs in the ER called it in. He went to jail for a year; he told me about that, too. How prison was no place for a man with his appetites. How when he got out, he vowed he’d never go back. On that, he kept his word.

Jacob raped a girl. That girl had a daughter. The girl died. The daughter, too. This bit of the family tree I know better. Which leaves us with? A father? A mother? Aunts, uncles, cousins? Did any of them care about him, or blame me for what happened?

I have no idea.

What about friends? I considered Jacob to be a loner, and not just because his job was to trawl the highways of the southern United States, but because I never saw him talk to anyone. Except, of course, that one night in the bar. Conrad.

Jacob spent a lot of time on his laptop. I assumed he was looking up porn, but knowing what I know now, it’s also possible he was hanging out with other predators, comparing notes, even bragging. Many perverts do. Is that how he met Conrad? Were there others? I was never granted access to the computer. Maybe Jacob had a whole online community, even a fan club.

I wasn’t allowed secrets, but Jacob kept plenty from me. Especially during his benders, the days, entire weeks, he’d disappear, only to return, high, wasted, whatever. He never talked about where he went, what he did. I never bothered to consider, how did he score the drugs? Surely that implies some kind of community right there, a dealer, other addicts, a means of contacting such people. He never mentioned names—and whatever the FBI recovered from his laptop, they never shared with me.