Silenced

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Kate made grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches at nine that night. “Since I cooked—and I hate cooking,” Kate said, “do I get some of your ice cream?”

Lucy pretended to think about it, then smiled. “Don’t eat it all.”

Kate made a beeline for the freezer. “Before dinner?” Lucy called.

“You might change your mind.” She grabbed a spoon, and like Lucy, ate right out of the container. “Oh, God, this is orgasmic.” Her eyes flew open and she stared at Lucy. “Sorry.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Why apologize? It is orgasmic.” She was twenty-five, and yet sometimes her family still treated her like a child. Kate wasn’t the worst, though, and Lucy loved her sister-in-law as if she were her flesh-and-blood sister.

Kate’s phone rang while she was eating the second bite. She glanced at the caller ID. “I swear, when I get two minutes someone needs me.”

“Donovan,” she snapped when she answered.

Lucy stood and stretched. Her muscles ached from not only the crash, but from sitting on the couch for so long.

“Rachel,” Kate said, “I’m going to put you on speaker, okay? I don’t want to have to repeat all this to Lucy.” She put her cell phone on speaker and put the phone on top of the piles of papers on the coffee table.

By way of introduction, Kate said, “Special Agent Rachel Burrows, meet analyst Lucy Kincaid. Rachel is in Richmond and just finished interviewing Amy Carson, the girl Jocelyn Taylor reunited with her mother.”

“Hi, Lucy,” Rachel said. “What Agent Donovan didn’t say was that she was my cyber crimes instructor at Quantico and my advisor.”

“That was my first year teaching at the Academy,” Kate said. “You know what’s scary? How many agents I meet now who I taught at some point over the last seven years. It makes me feel old.”

“You are forty,” Lucy teased.

“You are a cruel, cruel woman.” To Rachel, Kate said, “What do you have?”

“I tried Agent Armstrong and he was in a meeting, so he told me to call you. I spoke with Amy and her mother, but there was something odd going on.”

“Odd?”

“They wanted to get rid of me. Their answers were short and clipped. I have all the details—how Ivy Harris pulled Amy off the streets and got her off drugs, how she wouldn’t let Amy turn tricks anymore as a condition of living in the house. You’d think this girl was a saint the way Amy and even the mother talked about her.”

“Did they deny she was a prostitute?” Kate asked.

“No, they were very upfront about that. And I pushed a bit, and Amy admitted that Ivy was volatile. She had no tolerance for drugs, and when she caught one of the other girls using she tossed the house completely until she found every hidden pill, every hidden bottle of alcohol, and tossed everything down the sink. But in the process, she broke a few things, and Amy said the rampage had scared her. Part of that, I think, was that some of the hidden drugs were hers, though she didn’t explicitly say.”

“Did she have any specific information about the other girls in the house?”

“That’s when she clammed up. She was upset about the murders—very upset—but didn’t want to talk about the other girls. I have names—first names, anyway—Mina, Kerry, and Bryn.”

Lucy wrote them down. She said, “Did she have any idea where they might have gone after the fire? Has she been in contact with them since she left DC?”

“You jumped to the end of my story!” Rachel said. “Yes, she was in contact with Kerry, and get this—Kerry showed up at Amy’s house late Tuesday night.”

“You didn’t leave her there, did you?” Lucy asked. “She could bolt.”

“That’s why I’m sitting in my car outside of the house calling you guys. When I was talking to Amy, I asked about Hannah or Sara Edmonds, and Kerry came out of the kitchen, where she had apparently overheard everything I had said. She was freaked. Wanted to know how we found out. At first I thought it was a big scam—she wasn’t at all concerned about her culpability in leaving the arson fire, but was very concerned about Ivy’s safety. She has no identification and refuses to tell me her last name or where she’s from. Says she’s nineteen and met Ivy three years ago, before they moved into the house on Hawthorne. They were both working the streets. I asked her about Wendy James, she said that Wendy and Ivy knew each other and had a big falling-out. She definitely knows more, but she’s hedging. I think she’s going to bolt, not from us, but to go back to DC and help her friend.”

“Does she know that someone is killing her friends?” Kate said. “That she could be in deeper trouble here?”

“Yes. Amy’s mother doesn’t want her to go. When I asked how Kerry ended up in Richmond, the mom said she called, told Amy what happened, and Amy invited her to come down. The mom says Ivy saved Amy’s life, she wanted to help. But Kerry hasn’t been able to reach Ivy, and she’s been on edge.”

“I need to talk to her,” Lucy said. Then she glanced at Kate, realizing she’d probably overstepped again.

“We need to bring her back to DC,” Kate said. “Protective custody. If she doesn’t come voluntarily, arrest her.”

“On what grounds?”

“Obstruction of justice.”

“Can I talk to her first?” Lucy asked Kate. “She has info we need now, not tomorrow morning after she’s processed and debriefed. The killer isn’t going to stop until he’s done.”

Kate didn’t say anything for a minute.

Rachel said, “You still there?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “I’m thinking. Okay, go back to the door and ask if she’s willing to talk to us. I’ll assess the conversation and decide if we should bring her up. Call us back as soon as she agrees.”

“Got it.”

Rachel hung up. Lucy said, “If she knows Wendy and Ivy, and has lived with Ivy for three years, what do you bet she knows exactly what they were up to?”

“I’m sure you’re right, but we’re in no position to offer immunity.”

“She wants to help Ivy—she’ll talk to us.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Lucy grabbed her own cell phone, then before dialing realized she should run her idea by Kate first. “I want to call Hans and ask him to listen in. He’ll be able to assess the situation impartially.”

“Is what Noah said about you being biased still bothering you?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” she lied.

“You are a shitty liar, Lucy.”

“I don’t want anything tainting this case. Hans is the best.”

“Call him. I’ll fill Noah in.”